Amphibia, Tromarama's first solo exhibition in Canada, will open Friday, September 8th at 7 pm.

Recent headlines tease us with clickbaity tales of thought-controlled prosthetics, sweat-activated radios, and even AI bots inventing their own indecipherable languages. These headlines and details of new technological innovations urge us to contend with and confront an imminent, potentially threatening future. Much like amphibia, the class of animals that live both in water and on land, today’s humans interact daily with technologies that move us between physical and virtual worlds. We almost completely exist in between the two. Are we witnessing the early stages of our own evolutionary transition?

Throughout Tromarama’s practice, they have been experimenting with digital imaging technology and exploring how the digital world redefines our existence. Through a careful orchestra of lenticular prints, stop motion animation, and newly commissioned moving image works, the artists weave a narrative thread between real and virtual worlds. Tromarama invites us to consider what it means to exist at a moment when rapidly adapting technologies destabilize the line between human and machine. Audiences will be driven to question how digital experiences remake and recontextualize our understandings of today’s dominant narratives.

Amphibia will transform Centre A into a hybrid physical and digital space using five newly commissioned works, ranging from site-specific pieces to pulse-sensing technologies that interact with our own physical, individual bodies. Meanwhile, a continuous, cumulative, and interactive piece, 24 hours being others, will be generated throughout the show based on social media algorithmic prompts and audience responses. This exhibition marks the Canadian debut of Ying Tan, curator at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester, UK.