Triumph of Galatea: Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Since its opening, new media and technological art have been two of Kumu’s focal themes, which is why the opening exhibition of Kumu’s 20th anniversary year focuses on the current connections between art and artificial intelligence. The international group exhibition, referring to the myth of Pygmalion in its title, examines the changes and developments in human experience in culture and society in connection with the onslaught of new technologies.
AI on the exhibition
Prompt from the curator Anders Härm to AI:
Dear AI, please write me a wall text for the exhibition Triumph of Galatea: Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence taking place at the Kumu Art Museum. Participating artists are Andreas Albrectsen, Maria Arnal, Tilman Hornig, Olga Jürgenson, Marge Monko, Bernard Picart, Darja Popolitova, Jon Rafman, Sten Saarits, Jens Settergren, Jan Zuiderveld and Timo Toots.
AI’s response:
Triumph of Galatea: Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
In classical myth, Galatea comes to life as the sculptor’s ideal made animate—a creation that exceeds its maker’s intentions and begins to act on its own. In the age of artificial intelligence, this figure acquires renewed relevance. Algorithms no longer function merely as tools but increasingly as agents that generate images, texts, and decisions, reshaping how creativity, authorship, and human agency are understood. Triumph of Galatea: Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence explores this shifting relationship between human imagination and autonomous systems, asking what “triumph” might mean when creation is shared with machines.
Presented at the Kumu Art Museum, the exhibition brings together historical and contemporary perspectives, placing works from different eras into dialogue. The engravings of Bernard Picart evoke Enlightenment-era mythologies of reason, progress, and representation, forming a counterpoint to contemporary practices shaped by machine learning, data extraction, and networked culture. Works by Andreas Albrectsen, Maria Arnal, Tilman Hornig, Olga Jürgenson, Marge Monko, Darja Popolitova, Jon Rafman, Sten Saarits, Jens Settergren, Jan Zuiderveld, and Timo Toots examine how artificial intelligence mediates vision, memory, labor, and desire—at times critically, at times speculatively or poetically.
Rather than offering a single position on whether artificial intelligence threatens or expands artistic practice, Triumph of Galatea foregrounds uncertainty and negotiation. The exhibition invites viewers to consider how values, biases, and power structures are embedded in technological systems, and how these systems, in turn, shape our understanding of reality. Galatea’s awakening here is not a simple victory of the machine, but an ongoing and unsettled encounter between human creativity and the intelligences it has brought into being.
Curator: Anders Härm
Graphic design: Ott Metusala
Coordinators: Johanna Jolen Kuzmenko and Tiiu Saadoja
