Soft Errors, Hard Truths by Lilly Lulay

Presented by the Goethe-Institut Toronto 

In a world where algorithms shape what we see, who we connect with, and how we make sense of reality, Frankfurt artist Lilly Lulay explores what happens when invisible systems of sorting, tracking, and predicting become the infrastructure of daily life. Through photo-based collages, sculptures, textile and moving image works, and interactive installations, Lulay excavates the hidden mechanics of our algorithmic present—transfiguring smartphone photography, AI-generated metadata, and digital surveillance into tactile, three-dimensional (analog as well as digital) experiences. The exhibition's title captures this coexistence: “Soft errors" are the glitches and failures inherent in digital —and human— systems, while "hard truths" emerge when we confront the material consequences of living under algorithmic governance.

Presented for the first time in Canada, Lilly Lulay's exhibition at the Goethe Space Toronto, curated by Jutta Brendemühl, will be expanded by an opening event; a hands-on photo collage workshop with the artist; a talk about the role of empathy at the intersection of neuroscience, environmental design and AI by Vedran Dzebic, Entro Design’s Research Director; a presentation by DJ, scholar and curator Mark Campbell on datafication and data justice; and an exhibition activation by Wilding AI, a Goethe-Institut supported Canadian-German-Mexican research-creation collective investigating alternative AI futures using LLMs, generative sound and spatial audio.

Contextualising program:
Opening Reception with artist Lilly Lulay
Collective Cuts
Call & Response: Wilding AI
Call & Response: Vedran Dzebic on Design, Creativity & Empathic AI
Call & Response <> Mark Campbell

Lulay's practice reveals how technologies designed to connect us can simultaneously fragment communities and isolate individuals, while also uncovering unexpected sites of agency and collective reimagining. By making the intangible perceptible —stitching pixels into textile, laser-cutting data labels, crafting masks— the artist creates spaces where visual disorientation can be a gateway to critical awareness. Her work doesn't simply critique technological disruption; it invites us to touch, manipulate, and play with the systems that organize our world, for better or worse, revealing resilience in the act of making visible what surveillance capitalism would keep opaque.

In a moment of unpredictable massive change, Lulay's art offers both observation and reframing, diagnosis and possible alternate realities: to recognize how we are being reshaped by digital tools, and to collectively imagine what new forms of connection —and subtle creative subversion— might emerge.

Born 1985 in Frankfurt, Lilly Lulay studied photography, sculpture and media sociology in Germany and France. Her works examine photography as a ubiquitous cultural tool. Aware of today’s overproduction of images, Lulay uses her own and other people’s photographs as raw material. In her mixed media projects, combining collage, laser cutting, embroidery, and more, Lulay turns photographs into palpable objects that comment on the influence photographic media have on social behaviour and mechanisms of individual and collective perception. The artist, currently showing in France, Belgium, Germany, and China, has won numerous prizes and scholarships, including the Munich Stadtmuseum Photography Collection's fellowship Artists on Photography 2025/26.

Read the artist essay here:
Part of the 2026 program (re)Open Minds: Adapting to the Future
& 75 Years of Germany-Canada Diplomatic Relations

Related Events:
CONTACT Photography Festival, Toronto
LILLY LULAY
Interview Lilly Lulay - Internationale Photoszene Köln