Synthetic Mobility 

Curatorial essay by Nina Chkareuli

September 2026

The dual exhibition of Tokyo and New York-based artist Ai Makita and China-born and Houston-based kinetic artist Sizhu Li brings to the fore important questions about the interaction between technology and humans. Both artists are interested in seeing how the larger societal shifts affect the way artists represent humanity and reconstituted spaces. As the world is enveloped in various ideological and cultural conflicts the two artists try to understand what it means to remain individuals today. The concept of the exhibition is connected to the concept of hyperobjects introduced by Timothy Morton according to which we cannot perceive larger structures surrounding us and widely distributed among space and time, but we could try to describe their attributes and make a reasonable guess about their true nature. Synthetic Mobility - the artificial generation of realistic human movement patterns using advanced algorithms - is a phenomenon related to the new acceleration of living rhythm around us as promoted by digital progress. In her 1970s essay The Aesthetic of Silence Susan Sontag wrote that in modern times one of the most active metaphors for spiritual projects is art. The way we relate to art underscores how we relate to unseen structures, impulses of creation and manifestation of ideas. Looking at the works on view at Fou Gallery one could consider what animates these structures beyond the obvious mechanisms that bring them in motion. If an artist creates a painting or an AI model who is the primary mover here? And how can we come to understand what Walter Benjamin termed as the change of the sense of perception that comes together with the change in the entire mode of existence? The two artists respond to these questions in various ways.

Ai Makita presents paintings, several of them worked on in conjunction with AI model Midjourney and several based on images created in Photoshop by folding aluminum sheets. The depicted forms represent abstract conjunction of pipes, conduits, and industrial infrastructure varying in color from grey to green and blue. Folded materials result in labyrinths of fluidity and line resembling a circulatory or nervous system, an organism’s internal anatomy or an invisible technological network now made visible. Created conduits remind one of flowing rivers, transcended thresholds and linearity of time. Close conceptual connection with Minimalism makes Makita’s stretched lines internally connected to Donald Judd looking at the properties and the rigidity of the structures as well as relation of this (in)stability to the current historical moment. Process art likewise plays a significant role in Ai Makita’s practice albeit in the form more appropriate to our new, updated, version of it where digital took the place of the physical. Paintings reflect on this transformation presenting various shades of grey interspersed with light blue, lime and magenta. Looking at the works, a viewer is left with a vague sense of wonder of where all these meandering curves are leading and if there is any specific destination. In many ways these mysterious works look as separate pieces of a puzzle awakening in a viewer a wish to gain a higher ground or a perspective that allows them to take in the full view. Mystery is presented not through mystical effects, but through the inability to grasp the full picture, pushing us to step away, but also to look closer.

Sizhu Li presents sculptures made mostly from Aluminum sheets and industrial fans. In Pushing Hands (2024 to present), opposing forces travel through an industrial metal wave, creating a rhythm of tension and equilibrium referencing the Taoist principle of balance. This title directly references the fundamental Tai Chi martial arts practice (Tui Shou or "pushing hands"), a two-pers on exercise centered on sensing, yielding to, and balancing opposing forces. Evolving from her earlier project Moonment—a work designed to interact with bodies of water. Through programmed fans and suspended aluminum sheets, Li constructs a live, percussive environment of moving metallic waves that evokes a surreal night-sea landscape. Having migrated across diverse international contexts—from Viborg Kunsthal in Denmark and Lille Grand Palais in France to Contemporary at Blue Star, Alabama Contemporary Art Center, Washington College, and Howard County Arts Council in the United States—the installation creates a shared, tide-like moment that bridges geographically distant audiences. Yuanbao (2026) derived from Li’s previous work I Have Nothing But Clouds, brings the traditional Chinese symbol of wealth and blessing into conversation with the ephemeral form of clouds, moving between material and spiritual aspirations, permanence, and transience. As the title suggests, the work reinterprets the traditional Chinese gold ingot currency, bridging material wealth and economic value with the transient, cloud-like forms of the spiritual realm. Meanwhile, Oops, Caught’ya! (2026) turns the clamp into both a generative and restraining device: figures emerge through the contraption that captures them. Movement, suspension, and pressure become elements to consider freedom, constraint, instability and balance.

Both artists create a dialogue where materials work as experimental tools to devise new understanding of where we are as human species. If technology is taking away our humanity as claimed by many intellectuals maybe we might be witnessing progress or regress of the species due to the new forces as we are not fully aware of the extent of their power. Powerful AI models have created new paradigms where our intellect might become less of a virtue and more as a legacy, if this will happen it will be up to our creative impulses to lead the way and for artists to become bridges between the past and the future. Martin Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology (1954) examines technology not simply as a collection of tools, but as a fundamental way in which humans encounter and understand the world. Heidegger argues that modern technology is characterized by inframing (Gestell): a mode of revealing that organizes everything—including nature and potentially human beings—as a standing-reserve, something available for extraction, calculation, control, and use. A river, for example, is no longer encountered simply as a river but as a potential source of hydroelectric energy. In the case of Ai Makita and Sizhu Li we observe a similar idea as both artists look at motion, structure, and encounter as facilitated by materials, planes and color. Ai Makita’s paintings look at the transformation and limits caused by the new synthetic mobility, while Sizhu Li’s sculptures play with the same idea within three-dimensional objects. Both artists do not give specific arguments or answers, but provide us with aesthetic tools that can help us in broadening our understanding.