Continuing her recent work using interactive virtual world building as a tool to explore modern challenges and dilemmas, Ama has been commissioned by Attenborough Arts Centre to respond to the theme of our current exhibition, ‘The World is a Work in Progress’.

Ama has constructed a gleaming circular platform, in which visitors can meander between five exhibits. Digital sculpture and experimental film invite us into the all corners of the internet, from trending articles on Wiki-how that serve as a snapshot of this moment in time, to a distorted version of the artist’s own search history that reflects on our relationships with and illusions of privacy and control. Peering down on Google Earth offers perspectives on remoteness, connectivity and randomisation, whilst other films show forms of human and machine labour. These clips are not only commonplace, view-generating newsfeed content, but – amid crises of housing and hunger and a cultural resurgence towards older, slower ways of working – a contemplation of what is man-made, what is machine made, and what is destroyed.

 

This work is made available as part of Leicester Art Week, intended to increase access to the festival for those unable to attend in-person events at this time. Whether it connects or invades our lives, Ama Dogbe’s work offers us space to reflect on the internet; a world-building work in progress that spans the utopian, dystopian and somewhere in-between.