ONX.​Showcase.​Athens.​2026

Under the thematic title “Human in the Loop,” the ONX.Showcase.Athens.2026 exhibition presents ten works from the Onassis ONX and AiR ecosystem, six new commissions (works in progress) from the ONX Seeds program, and four related works from the Onassis Collection, exploring the handmade and the analog within a deeply technological age.

From May 21 to 24, Onassis Ready transforms into a space for vibrant dialogue between artistic practice and technological research. Through installations, moving image, performance, and interactive environments, the exhibition presents projects that explore what it means to remain human within systems increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and technological infrastructures. The exhibition also includes a series of talks and professional gatherings that connect artists, technologists, and cultural practitioners.

The ONX Showcase marks the launch of Onassis ONX in Greece, presenting a four-day program of selected works and events drawn from its acceleration and artist development initiatives in Athens and New York. As the Onassis Foundation’s global platform for digital cultures, since its founding in 2020, ONX has supported artists whose work has been presented at major international festivals—including SXSW, Sundance, Ars Electronica, Cannes, Performa, IDFA, and the Venice International Film Festival—as well as through its recurring showcase presentations.

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo, Zisis Bliatkas, Adam Cole, Marc Da Costa, Dionysios, Andrew Thomas Huang, Gregor Kuschmirz, Yiannis Kranidiotis, Marion Lasserre, Matthew Niederhauser, Yorgos Papafigos, Sarah Rothberg, Ali Santana, sister sylvester, Ivona Tau, Ontroerend Goed, and Playfool (Daniel Coppen & Saki Maruyama).

In the context of the exhibition, a series of talks and industry gatherings will offer opportunities for an open discussion among artists, curators, technologists, producers, and cultural professionals, while fostering exchange across the fields of arts, technology, and innovation.

Where have the humans gone?

In a world saturated by artificial intelligence, its variations, its offspring, its quiet colonization of almost every creative and social activity, the need to locate what remains irreducibly human has become urgent. Not as nostalgia, but as a necessity.

“Human in the Loop” borrows a phrase from AI engineering: a protocol designed to ensure that a person remains present inside an automated system, intervening, correcting, steering. Here, the phrase becomes a question. We may still be in the loop, but do we control it?

The loop is not only a safeguard. It can also become a trap: a closed circuit in which the human subject is positioned inside a system of its own making, one that may already operate beyond its grasp.

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly pervasive, embedded in infrastructures, platforms, and everyday interactions, the question of what constitutes humanness in any creative act becomes less philosophical and more existential.

The gradual displacement of humans from activities once thought to define them, the emergence of machines that communicate and operate autonomously, the market anxieties around technological obsolescence, and the quiet return to analogue practices all point to a paradox: the search for the human element becomes both more urgent and more elusive.

The works presented bring together artists from across the globe working across kinetic sculpture, bio-art, holographic film, AI-driven installations, immersive sound, and participatory performance. The projects emerge from across the Onassis ONX ecosystem, including its Members, Fellows, residency and incubation programs in Athens and New York, as well as from invited artists exploring related questions.

Each work stages a specific encounter between a body and a system. Through immersive environments, performative gestures, mechanical structures, and hybrid digital forms, the artworks make visible the feedback loop between human presence and algorithmic processes—revealing how identity, memory, perception, and agency are shaped, negotiated, and sometimes destabilized within technological systems.

Rather than positioning technology as something external to humans, the showcase approaches the human as already embedded within these networks: embodied, responsive, and constantly negotiating its place within the systems it has helped create.