Metamorphosis: Beyond the Real - Searching for Victoria Lu. When Humans and AI Think Together, the Story Begins

From 9 May to 22 November 2026, Ca’ Foscari Esposizioni will host Metamorphosis: Beyond the Real - Searching for Victoria Lu. When Humans and AI Think Together, the Story Begins, a research exhibition dedicated to the life and work of Victoria Lu and, more broadly, to themes of authorship, memory, and subjectivity in the age of artificial intelligence.

Through retrospective materials, curatorial research, generative images, and experiments in co-creation between humans and AI, the project does not offer a simple chronological reconstruction of Victoria Lu’s career, but instead investigates how a life can be continuously interpreted, translated, and reassembled in light of the historical and technological transformations of the present. A curator, critic, and educator, Victoria Lu was a significant figure in the development of contemporary curatorial discourse in the Chinese context, working for more than fifty years across Taiwan, Europe, the United States, mainland China, and Venice.

The initiative is organized by Future Pass Creative Inc., with organizational support from Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, and is promoted by Today Art Museum, Shanghai Soong Ching Ling Foundation, and Ho Chuang-Shih Calligraphy Art Foundation.

This exhibition is led by Angelo Maggi, Delegate of the Rector for International Relations at IUAV University of Venice, as Chief Curator. Fei Jun, Professor of Digital Art at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Chair of AIAIA, serves as Co-Curator together with Fu Sen and Chuang Cheng-chi, collectively constructing the exhibition’s narrative framework. The initiative is also held under the patronage of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and Università Iuav di Venezia.

Through the four interlinked structures of Generation, Translation, Recomposition, and Co-Writing, and through the interplay of AIGC, human–machine co-creation experiments, and works collected by Victoria Lu from artists across generations, the exhibition builds an evolving field suspended between history and future, memory and computation. The curatorial team does not seek to construct a single linear art-historical narrative for Victoria Lu; rather, it deliberately places her within a condition of ongoing emergence, so that AI does not function as the sole giver of answers, but instead allows both the artist and the viewer to become companions in the process of understanding.

Opening: Thursday, 7 May 2026 at 6:00 p.m. at Ca’ Foscari Esposizioni, Dorsoduro 3246.

The exhibition will be open to the public from 9 May to 22 November 2026, from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., closed on Sundays.