Immodest Witness (2026)
Sophia Wolfe and Chinning Liu
This exhibition begins with a premise. Throughout the history of scientific image-making, artists, illustrators, and image-makers have often occupied a role that Donna Haraway has described as the modest witness. They recorded and visualized experimental processes and outcomes, lending credibility to scientific claims while appearing to remain outside the work itself. In doing so, they participated in transforming scientists’ perspectives into forms of knowledge presented as objective. But that position was never neutral.
This raises a question about how knowledge comes into being. Scientific discoveries and technological innovations do not circulate on their own. They become intelligible through acts of mediation, visualization, and interpretation. Knowledge is produced not only through experimentation but through the practices that render it visible.
Can artists contribute to the production of knowledge outside the laboratory? This exhibition begins from that question.
From conceptual art and institutional critique to contemporary research-based practice, artists have approached scientific claims, datasets, and technological systems not as material to transmit, but as sites of critical inquiry.
Written and curated for Alt Projects by Jin Kim as part of TRYST International Art Fair