Presented by the Goethe-Institut Toronto 

Dans un monde où les algorithmes déterminent ce que nous voyons, avec qui nous entrons en contact et comment nous appréhendons la réalité, l’artiste francfortoise Lilly Lulay explore ce qui se passe lorsque des systèmes invisibles de tri, de suivi et de prédiction deviennent l’infrastructure de la vie quotidienne. À travers des collages photographiques, des sculptures, des œuvres textiles et des vidéos, ainsi que des installations interactives, Lulay met au jour les mécanismes cachés de notre présent algorithmique, transformant la photographie sur smartphone, les métadonnées générées par l’IA et la surveillance numérique en expériences tactiles et tridimensionnelles (à la fois analogiques et numériques). Le titre de l’exposition rend compte de cette coexistence : les « erreurs logicielles » sont les dysfonctionnements et les défaillances inhérents aux systèmes numériques — et humains —, tandis que les « dures vérités » émergent lorsque nous sommes confrontés aux conséquences matérielles d’une vie régie par des algorithmes.
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
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