THE HARD QUESTION OF ART by Metahaven
with Emilia Tapprest, Hend Samir, Antonio Vega Macotela and Metahaven
Friday September 11, 7pm
Art doesn’t change the world directly; yet we persist in wanting it to. This book argues for a different understanding of art. In these urgent times, we need to rethink the purpose and effects of art—for the creator, the audience, the owner. Art is what moves us, and there is more to being moved than meets the eye.
Through a series of thought experiments, Metahaven shows that art exists in the space between the image formed by the artist and the cognitive effort required to complete it. Art therefore is a question of perception. But what is the future of that space between image and interpretation when attention itself is collapsing?
The Hard Question of Art examines the many ways that art engages perception. Exploring cognition, empathy, complexity, and physics, Metahaven ask whether our capacity to perceive art anew can withstand the pressures of our times. Does beauty matter? Does art have a moral purpose? Is art a game or puzzle that AI will transform? Is the murmuration of starlings a form of art?
As our age asks us to feel and understand more at the same time, what are the cognitive futures of art?
Metahaven is the author persona for Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden, the artist collective known for their filmmaking, writing and design. They are famous for their elusive visuals and groundbreaking interdisciplinary research.
Antonio Vega Macotela lives and works between Barcelona and Mexico City. He studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, UNAM, and subsequently at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in the Netherlands, where he now serves as a tutor. He is currently pursuing a PhD at KHiO (Oslo National Academy of the Arts). He has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including: the 34th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil; the 29th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil; the 12th and 15th Havana Biennials; The Ungovernables, Third New Museum Triennial, New York; the 12th Taipei Biennial; Stories of Everyone, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the 14th Istanbul Biennial; the 2nd Poly/Graphic Triennial of Puerto Rico; dOCUMENTA 14, Kassel; Manifesta 9, Genk, Belgium; Toi et Moi, Centre Pompidou-Metz; SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States; Prospect.3, New Orleans, United States; The High Line, New York, United States; and Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Netherlands. In Mexico, his work has been exhibited at the Museo de Arte Moderno, the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, and the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, among other institutions.
Hend Samir is an Egyptian artist based in Amsterdam and Cairo, working primarily with painting, as well as printmaking, mixed media and video. She graduated from the Helwan University Faculty of Fine Arts, Printed Designs department in 2008, and was a resident artist of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, from 2020-22. Hend is this years recipient of the ABN Amro Award.
Recent exhibitions include; ‘The Talking Candle’, a solo show at Harkawik Galley, New York (2026) and Good Mom/Bad Mom, a group exhibition at Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2025).
Upcoming exhibitions include ‘A Startling Rush’, at Dordrechts Museum, in September (2026, solo) followed by a solo at the Stedelijk Museum in spring, 2027.
Hend Samir’s paintings are portals into a disquieting, alchemical world. Her canvases see figures slowly emerge — like geological forms surfacing over millennia, coaxed into being by the liquid pressures of her brushstrokes. Excavating layers of paint, she extracts pre-existences from the chaos of fluid, atemporal landscapes, drawing out characters engaged in subversive acts — indifferent to, but aware of the viewer’s gaze.
Emilia Tapprest (NVISIBLE.STUDIO) is a Finnish-French filmmaker and design researcher based in Amsterdam. Her collaborative research approaches digital infrastructures as an “atmospheric” condition; ambient, porous, and coextensive with sensing. Her projects often take the form of diegetic systems in which emerging technologies are shaped loy messy everyday realities.
milla is a tormer resident of Enter the Hyper-Scientific at EPFL (2025), Future Heritage at the Institute for Advanced Study in Amsterdam (202S), Rupert AiR (2023), and the Jan van Eyck Academy (2020-21).
She has presented work, among others, at VISIO— European Programme on Artists® Moving Images, Bologna Art City, drome, MU Hybrid Art House and the National Space Centre Ireland. Emilia is a cutor at the Geo-Design MA at Design Academy Eindhoven.
