After a hiatus, the doors of the New Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan have reopened to the public to showcase a brand-new and expansive exhibit called New Humans: Memories of the Future. We recently visited the museum during its beloved Thursday late night hours, where we found the multistoried space chock-full of other guests taking in the eclectic creations on display. Leading with the quote, “Nothing is stranger to humans than their own image,” from Czech writer Karel Čapek, the exhibit presents artistic work at the intersection of humanity and technology. Visitors can glimpse mind-bending paintings layered with collage, mechanically driven devices, floating drones overhead, and dangling humanoid figures, all of which range from endearing and engaging to grotesque and uncanny. As we perused narrow hallways, wide galleries, and secret staircases, we could hear the clicking of an automated typewriter, the rattling of an unexplained jar of crystal shards, and the lilting music of a short film. The exhibit is a love letter to science fiction and the strange, while explicating the real and sometimes harrowing cultural roots of each artist, movement, and reference featured. One imposing construction by artist Tau Lewis, a colossal human frame built from an assortment of textiles, found objects, and fragments of shell, bone, and pearl, bears the unsettling proverb “When the axe came into the forest, the trees said, ‘the handle is one of us.” As a jellyfish-like robot whirs overhead, piloted by unseen engineers behind a gallery wall, the figure opens its arms in an embrace, a fusion of organic materials and steel with a human form. Perhaps it asks us, how much are we made of nature? How much are we made of technology? And how much does it matter?
