New York NY
United States
Backslash at Cornell Tech is pleased to announce the artists selected for its 2026–27 cohort. With its largest cohort to date, this year’s artists will engage bleeding-edge technologies to advance artworks in collaboration with Cornell faculty and students, while engaging the broader NYC community through exhibitions and conversations.
The 2026–27 cohort includes Backslash Fellow Trevor Paglen; Backslash Interventions Patricia Echeverria Liras, Kevin Peter He, and Shuyi Cao; and Backslash Reboot Ben Rubin. Together, these artists explore questions surrounding artificial intelligence, mixed reality, material infrastructure, performance, and environmental systems, centered around the evolving relationships between humans and technology.
The program will include public presentations and exhibitions, offering opportunities for audiences to experience works developed through sustained dialogue between artists, researchers, and students. By fostering long term collaboration across disciplines, Backslash continues its mission of supporting nonlinear artistic practices while advancing new approaches to art, technology, and research.
Backslash at Cornell Tech is Cornell University’s initiative for art that escapes convention. Backslash supports artists whose practices are nonlinear, unexpected, adventurous, questionable, and primed for engagement with new technologies—all symptoms of being “backslash.” Since its founding in 2016, Backslash has awarded over 500,000 USD in grants to fund new work by practicing artists. Previous recipients include Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Miao Ying, Jen Liu, and Mimi Ọnụọha. Backslash artworks have been exhibited at numerous locations, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Taipei Biennial, Vienna Seccession, SculptureCenter, Asia Culture Center, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Okayama Art Summit, Museum of the City of New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, and Orlando Museum of Art.
Backslash takes its name from the \ (backslash) “escape” character in computer programming, used to indicate that whatever comes after the \ should be interpreted outside the normal mode of input and output to do something special.
