CIFRA

What if your archive is already an artwork? Join our free online MeetUp Unarchiving on May 20 with artists working with found footage, personal archives, and historical materials. An archive is never neutral. It shapes what is remembered and what disappears. In this conversation, we explore how artists work with archival material as something that can be reinterpreted, reassembled, and questioned. Speakers include Bill Morrison @thevillagedetective , Masha Godovannaya @godovannayamasha , and Rafał Morusiewicz @rafal_morusiewicz whose work spans film, research, and experimental formats. All you need is curiosity, and perhaps something you have been holding onto. 🕕 May 20, 6 pm CEST All details in the link in bio Cover images: The City Bridges Are Open Again by Masha Godovannaya Slides images: Untitled №1 by Masha Godovannaya Photos of Bill Morrison by Aris Rammos; Masha Godovannaya by Anastasia Soboleva

Venice shifts into Biennale mode. The 61st International Art Exhibition opens under the theme In Minor Keys, turning away from grand gestures toward quieter forces shaping daily life. Surveillance, reproduction, mourning, resistance, digitalisation — all refracted through moving image, immersive environments, and the charged presence of bodies in space. CIFRA’s experts in media art and digital culture have selected 16 venues — video installations, immersive environments, screen-based projects, and technologically charged exhibitions that matter most at this Biennale. Join CIFRA CLUB for the full guide and map. Whether you’re heading to Venice this May or bookmarking for later — save this post. And see you in Venice!

What does it mean to move freely through the city? A Diary of Private/Public Escapes by Anhar Salem @nahaweer unfolds as a series of fragments filmed mostly on a phone. Born in Jeddah in 1993 to a Yemeni and Indonesian family, Salem works across different cultural contexts, observing everyday life shaped by social rules and video art. Many of these works capture her first experiences of moving outside the home alone, without permission or a male guardian. The exhibition follows a chronological structure, tracing how these moments develop over time, from early attempts to navigate space to more personal and complex reflections. In her work, escape is tied to real conditions. Years after filming, the neighborhood seen in one of her films was demolished, and two members of her family passed away in contexts marked by marginalization. These videos are not dramatic acts of resistance, but a way of observing how boundaries operate and how they can briefly shift. Small gestures and everyday actions become ways of confronting reality from within. Follow the link in bio and see where escape begins. The artist’s personal intro is there too.

Venice shifts into Biennale mode — and CIFRA is already there. We went to Venice to create a guide to the key places of the 2026 Venice Art Biennale, asking artists, curators, and Biennale guests — including David Elliott, AES+F, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, and others — what they consider essential to visit. From pavilions and exhibitions to locations where contemporary art, media, and digital culture meet — the guide maps what matters most this year. Join CIFRA CLUB for the full guide and map. And see you in Venice!

We spent the last few days moving through the Giardini, the Arsenale, and a handful of satellite shows during the Venice Biennale 🇮🇹🍕 Our highlights? The Danish Pavilion, Japan, Taiwan, and several media-art exhibitions that blurred the lines between art, installations, and cinema. Very grateful to @cifraworld for curating this experience for us! If you’re heading to Venice this year, definitely check out their media guide. And if you want to explore media art beyond the biennale, use code ALEXYUYU for one month free of the CIFRA Club — artist interviews, deep dives, archives, recommendations, and more. Links are in bio. Are you planning to visit the Biennale this time? #venicebiennale #biennalearte2026 #arttok #artreels #veniceitaly

RestART Reality Open Call lasted 60 days and received 652 submissions from 514 artists from around the world. The range of artistic languages, ideas, and approaches went far beyond what a single selection could contain. While our fantastic jury continues reviewing the full list of eligible submissions, CIFRA Art Department assembled a shortlist of works that moved us, surprised us, and made us look twice. One additional work will be selected through the Audience Award because viewers’ perspectives matter to us too. Voting opens on Friday, May 15, when we will invite you to choose one more winner together. Stay tuned!

How does archival material find its way back into the world? A Soviet comedy film pulled from the sea. Footage permanently altered by accidental exposure to light. A sound dreamt before the film itself existed. Our free online MeetUp follows artists working with images that survive through damage and disappearance, approaching archives as living material. Register for the MeetUp to ask your own questions. We will also send the full stories behind the works featured in these cards, along with a selection of six works from CIFRA exploring similar questions around memory and archival material. 🕕 Join us on May 20 at 6 PM CEST It is free. Cover image: Bodies without Bodies in Outer Space by Rafał Morusiewicz @rafal_morusiewicz

What if? It is a good place to begin. On CIFRA, you can be both creator and curator. Build your own playlist around what genuinely fascinates you. We gathered different ways to create playlists on the platform through architecture, feminism, music, AI, nature, synaesthesia, and historical remixing. A playlist can begin with a theme, a visual obsession, a research idea, or simply a feeling you want to stay with a little longer. Start with your idea and follow where it leads. Register and create your own playlist on CIFRA.

Riar Rizaldi @riarrr is an artist and filmmaker from Jakarta. He works with the things nobody wants to see: invisible labour, colonial extraction, workers who die at sea and get buried in the ocean. Or in a fridge. With the fish. We met to talk about why horror is a method, not a genre, and why nothing has changed. The art still matters anyway. Allegedly. Watch on CIFRA - link in bio.

POV: Exploring Venice with the CIFRA Digest during Biennale Arte 2026. 🇮🇹 We’ve been experiencing media art through the CIFRA Club for inspiration. It really allows us to engage with creativity on a deeper level through tailored interviews, curated selections, and extensive artist profiles. Experience the curated world of @cifraworld for yourself: use promo code ALEXYUYU before May 31st for a one-month free trial. Find the link on our bio ;) (Commercial Collaboration) #venicebiennale

Does deepfake steal from artists or open new possibilities? Praises the liar or asks honest questions about ourselves? That’s what our new episode of Uncovered with Arts is about. Meet “What is Deepfake?” out now on CIFRA. We go inside the technology to make reality visible and see what impact it has on our lives. You’ll meet artists who experiment with their own deepfakes, place erased figures back into history, and use AI to generate another reality. At the end of the episode, we’ll teach you to spot deepfakes. Fair warning: works for now, tomorrow - no guarantees. Because by the time you finish watching, the quality of deepfakes will already be higher. We had the best guides through this complex topic, artists: Boris Eldagsen @boriseldagsen Tamiko Thiel @tamikothiel Stéphane Degoutin Gwenola Wagon @degoutin_wagon Jess Tucker @__fetter__ Claudia Larcher @claudia_larcher / Mihai Grecu @thegrecu Ryotaro Sato @ryotaro_sato_ AI ethics expert Catharina Doria @cahdoria Curators Daniela Duca De Tey @danieladucadetey Juergen Hagler @juergenhagler Watch the full version on CIFRA.com

What happens when AI reshapes perception? Promptoscape is a selection curated for CIFRA by Dajun Yao and Ma Nan, extending from the exhibition at Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum into CIFRA’s Restart Reality season. This season looks at how contemporary artists reconstruct reality through fiction, manipulation, unstable images, and synthetic media. In Promptoscape, AI becomes part of that shift: reshaping perception, language, memory, and the logic of the image itself. Cover image by Boris Eldagsen @boriseldagsen x INFAMIS Explore more works from Promptoscape on CIFRA.