Espacio de Arte Contemporaneo (EAC)
Arenal Grande 1930, 11800 Montevideo
Opening hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 1–7pm; Sunday, 11am–5pm
Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (MNAV)
Av Tomas Giribaldi 2283, 11300 Montevideo
Opening hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 1–8pm
Museo de Artes Decorativas | Palacio Taranco
Circunvalacion Durango / 1 de Mayo, 11100 Montevideo
Opening hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11am–6pm
ifa's digital exhibition project will now transform and embark on an exhibition tour across the Americas under the title Are You for Real: Cosmotechnics, Counterfictions, and the Art of Worldbuilding. This multi-year journey begins with its premiere on April 23, 2026, with parallel presentations at three venues in Montevideo, Uruguay: Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo (EAC), Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (MNAV), and Museo de Artes Decorativas/Palacio Taranco.
Despite the exhibition’s transformation, the philosophical query it seeks to tackle remains the same: “Are you for real?” Which would be an odd question to ask were it not for the fact that we now have technologies capable of generating realities. Computation is driving a shift in our understanding of what is “real” and how it should be distinguished from the merely possible, the virtual, and the actual. At the same time, computation has reached a planetary scale, and its infrastructure now interconnects with and shapes the Earth. This has far-reaching consequences, including for artistic production. The featured works all entail an inseparable digital layer, forming a cosmos that relies on the stack beneath it.
Building on the online platform, the exhibition renders the artworks into six thematic clusters that explore how our world is shaped by digital technologies—looking at their impact on the planet and ecosystems, their potential to heal and connect species, their links to magic and imagination, their creation of new digital territories, the influence on how we predict the future, and how past dreams and lost futures still echo in the present.
Are You for Real situates multiple cosmotechnics (after Yuk Hui), alternating between planetary and terrestrial, ecological and technological, magical and decolonial. It expands international cultural exchange through digital worldbuilding, aesthetic inquiry, and political reflection. Whether imaginative or fact-driven, the artworks offer counternarratives to a Californian ideology rooted in exclusion and extractivism. To embed the show in its geographical context, four artworks by artists from Uruguay are incorporated into to the selection.
Participating artists
Juan Covelli, Nolan Oswald Dennis and Noa Mori, César Escudero Andaluz, Moritz Jekat, Liliana Farber, Jazmina Figueroa, Huniti Goldox, Bruna Guernieri, Hollow, Hagit Keysar and Ariel Caine, Sybil Montet, Diego Morera & Sebastián Lambert, Zheng Mahler, Bahar Noorizadeh and Rudá Babau, João Renato Orecchia Zúñiga, Theodolus Polyviou, Sahej Rahal, The Rodina, Miriam Simun, Saša Spačal, Simon Speiser, Yehwan Song, Grupo Synco, Tanky, Jonas Van & Juno B, Ziyang Wu and Mark Ramos, Tatyana Zambrano, and Zheng Mahler.
Are You For Real was launched in 2020 as an online platform by ifa—Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen. Between 2020 and 2023, the platform was curated by Julia Grosse, Yvette Mutumba, and Paula Nascimento, and between 2023 and 2025 by Giulia Bini and Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás. The physical iterations of the exhibition are based on the platform, and curated by Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás in cooperation with the host institutions. Her co-curator in Uruguay is Martín Craciún.
The second iteration commences in July 2026 at Museum Emilio Caraffa in Cordoba, Argentina, to be followed by various locations on the American continent in the coming years. The platform will remain accessible online, offering hybrid access to a range of works presented across both contexts.
ifa—Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen works with partners worldwide to promote freedom in the arts, research and civil society by bringing people together who are committed to an open society. To facilitate this exchange, we are committed to generating analogue and digital spaces for people to network, negotiate and co-create. We give a voice to activists, artists and scientists, promote their collaboration and work closely with European partners to pursue our goals. Based on our core competencies in art, research and civil society, we build and foster networks to achieve a lasting impact.
ifa is supported by the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the state of Baden-Württemberg and its capital Stuttgart.
Press contact: presse@ifa.de
