UC San Diego’s Mandeville Art Gallery opens “Bodily Autonomy,” Lauren Lee McCarthy’s largest solo show in the U.S. to date. Curator Ceci Moss brings together two major series of works—Surrogate (2022) and Saliva (2022)—in which the Chinese-American artist examines bio-surveillance through performances, videos, and installations. A newly commissioned Saliva Bar, for example, invites visitors to reflect on data privacy, race, gender, and class as they pertain to genetic material over traded spit samples.

Gala Hernández López’s sci-fi documentary for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world (2024) premieres at Berlinale. In the double-screen collage of YouTube videos, archival images, and 3D animations, the French artist-researcher and filmmaker explores the links between crypto culture and cryogenics as two speculative technologies that exploit the future. A key narrative figure: American extropian and cypherpunk Hal Finney, who, in a fictional future, implements societal biostasis for economic gain.

Martina Menegon’s interactive self-portrait I’m sorry I made you feel that way (2023) opens at discotec, Vienna, exploring new forms of care for our hybrid selves. Menegon’s blobby CGI avatar, generated with AI and personal biometric data, will show signs of deterioration the more the artist’s physical needs are neglected. When stressed, for example, the virtual portrait will refuse interaction and, eventually, dissolve into glitched abstraction. An AR extension adds a sculptural layer, spilling Menegon’s failing frame into the gallery.

Dredging up grotesque imaginaries, Tishan Hsu’s “recent works 2023” opens at Secession in Vienna. Taking centre stage at the artist-run space, the American artist presents tablet-skin-screen (2023, image), an undulating moiré pattern-adorned sculpture that evokes both flesh and (video) feedback. Complementing the unnatural geometry, surrounding morphing videos and prints depict “the interpenetration of physical bodies with virtual digital forms.”

For MIT Technology Review. Cassandra Willyard surveys the state of rapidly advancing artificial womb research. As a promising prototype nears readiness for trials with human embryos, researchers and bioethicists are weighing potential implications on child-rearing. “The most challenging question to answer is how much unknown is acceptable,” says FDA neonatologist An Massaro to Willyard, of concerns that include gauging risk for premature infants and shifting discourse about a woman’s right to choose.

Anicka Yi’s solo exhibition “A Shimmer Through The Quantum Foam” opens at Esther Schipper, Berlin, evolving the Korean-American artist’s notion of the “biologized machine” with new works. Visitors enter a hybrid ecosystem of fleshy landscapes created with machine learning models and suspended luminescent pods resembling Radiolaria. As the soft glow of an aqueous ooze—indicative of life’s marine origins—sprawls across the gallery floor, a custom-made scent by perfumer Barnabé Fillion fills the air.

The Hole’s yearly thematic group show, “Fembot,” opens at the New York gallery’s Bowery location, celebrating technology and the female form. “Representations of the female body are as vast as the internet, from futuristic robots to porous, sweaty flesh,” writes gallerist Kathy Grayson about the works of Salomé Chatrior, Auriea Harvey, Jordan Homstad, Faith Holland, Nicole Ruggiero, and others that range from “cyborg goddesses” to post-human grotesques. Case in point: CGI artist Emma Stern’s 3d-printed ‘amphemme’ Brooke (2023, image).