Suzanne Treister is a British artist and pioneer in the digital/new media/web based field from the beginning of the 1990s. In her work, fiction is used to create alternative worlds that highlight the strategies with which power mechanisms operate in our lives. She does this through a series of individual projects that usually take several years of work and where, through formats such as interactive software, video, drawing, painting, or watercolor, she analyses alternative belief systems, mechanisms of control and surveillance, and links between new technologies and society.

Each of these projects develops a very precise iconography and narrative. They are worlds in themselves, with various branches, each more surprising than the last. For this exhibition, her first solo show in Spain, Treister presents a journey through several of them, covering a span from the 1990s to today. However, the visionary nature of each of these projects places them in direct contact with the present, facilitating various scenarios that, like an algorithm, allow us to trace—within certain parameters—our own history based on our choices.

Evolving out of this body of work, Software (1993-1994) presents a series of fictional computer programs in floppy disk format with their respective packaging. Anticipating today’s Apps, the uniqueness of these works lies in their colorful oil-painted presentations, whose beauty and materiality hark back to classical art. Thus, the plasticity of classical art and painting contrasts with the ethereal nature of the virtual world, creating a kind of material authenticity for a fictional world and anticipating a debate that remains relevant to date.

In HEXEN 2.0 (2009 – 2011), the artist creates a series of watercolors that reimagine the tarot deck to, in her own words, invoke alternative futures. The idea emerged while she was reading about cybernetics and the Macy Conferences, which, after World War II, brought together key scientists in New York to develop a unified theory of the human mind aimed at controlling it and preventing a Third World War. She conceived a project to demonstrate that these ideas were foundational to contemporary control systems, particularly the algorithmic feedback mechanisms of Web 2.0. In HEXEN 2.0, the Death arcana is represented by mathematician John von Neumann, who was instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb; the Magician is Timothy Leary, one of the pioneers of psychedelic drugs; and the Hermit is embodied by the anarcho-primitivist ‘Unabomber,’ known for sending mail bombs to American universities and institutions until the mid-1990s. The HEXEN 2.0 tarot, published as a deck, is intended to be used as a learning device for groups to discuss and envision positive alternative futures, through inspiration resulting from chance combinations of cards.

Kabbalistic Futurism (2021-2023) is a large body of work divided into several sections. For this exhibition, we present two oil paintings that focus on the architectures the artist dedicates to museums. In this project, Treister draws inspiration from her Jewish education—more specifically, from the wisdom of Kabbalah—which, long before the first mentions of the Big Bang, already described the universe as the result of an initial expansion. In these works, the artist constructs fictional museums that would exist in some extraplanetary future, built with geometries derived from diagrams found in typical Kabbalistic drawings of the Jewish tradition.

This exhibition explores over thirty years of artistic practice that views art as a space for developing transformative fiction, using fantasy as its main tool for activism. Throughout this journey, Treister invites us to experience her skill in combining and dialoguing various types of knowledge: science, technology, geopolitics, and mystical insights. By integrating these elements, she creates narratives that expand the visitor’s mind, stimulating their ability to imagine and speculate. This mental exercise proposed by Treister allows us to experience her work as a useful tool for observing the present with curiosity and a touch of suspicion, while still embracing irony and enjoyment. In this way, a direct conversation with the viewer is initiated, inviting them to reflect together on what is to come.