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Written by Marta Bettiol on . Posted in current exhibitions.

STRANGE RULES

STRANGE RULES

curated by Mat Dryhurst, Holly Herndon, and Hans Ulrich Obrist
with Adriana Rispoli
Joshua Citarella, Harold Cohen, Primavera De Filippi, Simon Denny with Venkatesh Rao, Stephanie Dinkins, Fabien Giraud, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, He Zike, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Ho Tzu Nyen, New Models, Ayoung Kim, Agnieszka Kurant, Michael Levin, Trevor Paglen, Philippe Parreno, Lorenzo Senni, Avery Singer, Ken Stanley, sub, terra0
May 4 - November 22, 2026

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The project marks a significant evolution in the Palazzo’s mission to serve as a living site of contemporary production which brings the humanities and sciences together.

Strange Rules introduces the concept of Protocol Art, a practice that engages with the underlying rules that dictate how culture is produced, distributed, and perceived in a digital age. These rules frequently manifest as algorithms, artificial intelligence models, computer protocols, platforms, and various technological infrastructures. Protocol Art does not simply use these tools; it exposes, analyses, and transforms them into artistic material itself.

Consequently, the artwork is not merely a final product, it is a process governed by instructions, representing the invisible architecture that enables the aesthetic experience. This shift in perspective - moving from the object to the system, and from the singular author to collaboration and ultimately human-machine co-creation - defines one of the most urgent territories in contemporary research.

The launch of Strange Rules inaugurates Palazzo Diedo, Venice, as the first space in Italy to foster a curatorial and theoretical reflection on Protocol Art, positioning itself at the forefront of the debate regarding the relationship between art and technology.

Alongside the exhibition, a major new publication will establish the first comprehensive account of Protocol Art as a field of practice. Research for this landmark volume will unfold throughout the duration of Strange Rules, with Palazzo Diedo serving as both exhibition site and working research environment. The resulting book aims to be a defining reference for Protocol Art, mapping its key works, practitioners, and theoretical foundations across art and technology.

The project will transform the historic architecture of Palazzo Diedo into a dynamic laboratory of ideas:

  • The Ground Floor features a major new collaborative commission by Mat Dryhurst and Holly Herndon in partnership with SUB. This level will function as a vibrant hub for time-based interventions, including lectures, performances, and screenings. Visitors can also explore the unique installation that runs for the duration of the exhibition.
  • The First Floor presents a series of site-specific installations and selected video works that expand on the themes of Protocol Art, creating a direct dialogue with the activations occurring on the ground floor.
  • Second Floor - Palazzo Diedo's Black Box presents a selection of video works that probe the intricate layers of contemporary society, its entaglement with technology, and the invisible protocols quietly underpinning them.

  • Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Attention Guild, 2026. Foto di Stefano Mattea

  • Ken Stanley, Picbreeder, 2007. Foto di Stefano Mattea

  • Joshua Citarella & New Models, Marketplace of Ideas, 2026. Foto di Stefano Mattea

  • Ayoung Kim, Dancer in the Mirror Field. Photo by Joan Porcel Studio

  • Simon Denny Venkatesh Rao, Monsters Between Worlds. Photo by Joan Porcel Studio.

  • Philippe Parreno, The Diambulist Humself. Photo by Joan Porcel Studio.

Artists

  • Lawrence Abu Hamdan

    Lawrence Abu Hamdan, the “Private Ear,” is an artist and audio investigator whose work has been presented in the form of forensic reports, lectures and live performances, films, publications, and exhibitions all over the world.

  • Joshua Citarella & New Models

    Joshua Citarella (1987, New York, USA) artist and internet culture writer.
    New Models is a non-linear media channel & community addressing the emergent effects of networked technology on life.

  • Primavera De Filippi

    Primavera De Filippi is an artist and legal scholar at Harvard University, exploring the intersection between art, law and technology, focusing specifically on the legal and political implications of blockchain technology.

  • Simon Denny & Venkatesh Rao

    Simon Denny (1982, Auckland, NZ) makes projects that unpack the stories technologists tell us about the world using a variety of media. Venkatesh Rao (1974, IN) is a writer and consultant

  • Stephanie Dinkins

    Stephanie Dinkins (1964, Perth Amboy, USA) is a transdisciplinary artist whose work sits at the intersection of emerging technologies and future histories.

  • Fabien Giraud

    Fabien Giraud (1980, Paris, France) explores the history and evolution of technologies.

  • He Zike

    He Zike (1990, Guiyang, CN) artist who works with mediums including video, writing, performance, prints, and computer program.

  • Mat Dryhurst & Holly Herndon

    Mat Dryhurst (1984, Birmingham, UK) artist, musician, and technological researcher.
    Holly Herndon (1980, Johnson City, USA) artist and composer.

  • Lynn Hershman Leeson

    Lynn Hershman Leeson (1941, Cleveland, USA) artist whose work spans installation, photography, video, interactive media, and Net Art, engaging with themes of surveillance, privacy and artificial intelligence.

  • Ho Tzu Nyen

    Ho Tzu Nyen (1976, Singapore) is a multidisciplinary artist weaving fictions out of Asia’s histories.

  • Ayoung Kim

    Ayoung Kim (1979, Seoul, KR) is recognized as an artist on the vanguard of digital innovation.

  • Agnieszka Kurant

    Agnieszka Kurant (1978, Łódź, PL) artist whose work investigates collective and nonhuman intelligences, the future of labor and creativity, and the exploitations within digital capitalism.

  • Michael Levin

    Michael Levin (1969, Moscow, URSS) is Distinguished Professor in the Biology department at Tufts.

  • Trevor Paglen

    Trevor Paglen (1974,Camp Springs, USA) is an artist whose work spans image-making, sculpture, investigative journalism, writing, engineering, and numerous other disciplines.

  • Philippe Parreno

    Philippe Parreno is a French artist who rose to prominence in the 1990s, earning critical acclaim for his work that spans a diversity of media, including film, sculpture, drawing, and text.

  • Lorenzo Senni

    Lorenzo Senni (1983, Milan, IT) is a musician and visual artist.

  • Avery Singer

    Avery Singer (1987, New York, USA) artist whose work explores the possibilities in the convergence of painting and technology.

  • Ken Stanley

    Ken Stanley is an AI and machine learning researcher (focused on open-ended discovery), author, and entrepreneur.

  • terra0

    terra0 (Berlin, DE) has explored how ecosystems can become economic agents and engages in questions of collective ownership.

2026

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Written by Marta Bettiol on . Posted in current exhibitions.

Unfinished, Ceal Floyer

Unfinished
Ceal Floyer

curated by
Ann Gallagher and Jonathan Watkins
Palazzo Diedo - Berggruen Arts & Culture Venice
May, 4 - November 22, 2026

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Berggruen Arts & Culture will present an exhibition of works by the acclaimed British artist Ceal Floyer, who died in December 2025. 

Comprising video, photography, sound, readymades and sculptural pieces, Floyer’s work often employs humour derived from shifting points of view, puns, double-takes and an idiosyncratic reordering of everyday phenomena. It conveys simultaneously the vital possibility of creativity in any situation and a hint of absurdity.

Ceal Floyer was one of the foremost conceptual artists of her generation, renowned for her concise humour and profoundly understated visual language. Her works are brilliantly inventive, full of razor-sharp intelligence, dry wit, and visual acuity.

Born in Karachi in 1968, Floyer spent some time as a child in Sydney and Rabat, before her family settled in England. She studied at Goldsmiths College, London during 1991-94, heady years for the Young British Artists (YBAs) and, before she graduated, she was already being noticed by well-placed critics and curators.

She was included in the seminal group exhibition General Release, organised by the British Council for the 1995 Venice Biennale. On this occasion she exhibited Unfinished (1995), a closeup looped video projection of someone rolling, or “twiddling”, their thumbs. The exhibition takes its title from Unfinished, bringing the work back to Venice after more than thirty years.


The first work in the exhibition ’Til I Get It Right (2005) is a sound piece that plays a line from Tammy Wynette’s famous country song, “I’ll just keep on … ‘til I get it right”, with the words “falling in love” edited out, played in a repetitive loop. Other highlights include Bucket (1999), in which a CD player emits the sound of a water drop falling every few seconds. Again and Again (2012) results from Floyer handwriting the word “Again” over and over, on top of itself, to become illegible. In a complementary work, Ink on Paper (2010), involved the process of felt tip pens fixed upright on sheets of blotting paper until their ink drained out to make a series of stains, the range of colours determined by the number of pens in a bought set. As Floyer observed, “the result is something actually quite beautiful (which at first I found slightly alarming) and for me this is OK because it manages to stay faithful to the conceptual origins of the work”.


Such colour is unusual for Floyer, an artist perhaps most famous for her Monochrome Till Receipt (White) (1999). This work, listing white items bought from a supermarket, conflates everyday experience in the real world with the idea of modernist abstraction taken to its extreme. Similarly, the white video screen of Blind (1997) appears to be a homage to structural-materialist filmmaking of the 1960s and 70s, but then reveals itself to be footage of a roller blind moving against a window.

Blind involves the kind of word-play that occurs throughout Floyer’s work. Half Empty and Half Full (1999), two identical photographs of a glass half-filled with water, refers to the expression that defines optimism and pessimism. While Light Switch (1992), the earliest work in the exhibition, projects the actual-size image of a light switch directly onto a wall. One of her most recent and touching works, 644, (2025), a colour photograph, depicts sheep grazing in a hilly landscape. A number from 1 to 644, in a simple font, is superimposed on each, reminding us of the counting we were encouraged to do as children slipping into sleep.

The exhibition is supported by Esther Schipper and Lisson Gallery.

  • Unfinished, Ceal Floyer. Photo by Joan Porcel Studio.

  • Unfinished, Ceal Floyer. Photo by Joan Porcel Studio.

  • Unfinished, Ceal Floyer. Photo by Joan Porcel Studio.

  • Ceal Floyer, Photograph by Hugo Glendinning

2026

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Written by Marta Bettiol on . Posted in current exhibitions.

PENUMBRA

Kelsey Lu & Yumna Al-Arashi
2026, PENUMBRA

Palazzo Diedo - Berggruen Arts & Culture Venice July 8 - November 22, 2026

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Berggruen Arts & Culture and Monteverde Productions present PENUMBRA, an exhibition by Kelsey Lu opening July 8 at Palazzo Diedo. The work continues the live performance staged at the palazzo on May 7, 2026, transforming its traces — soil, sound, and charcoal — into a lasting installation developed in dialogue with photographer Yumna Al-Arashi.

PENUMBRA was conceived across three realms:

  • Earth: black sand, gravity, imprint, friction, decay, ancestry
  • Dream: improvisation, fractured memory, subconscious movement, lucidity
  • Heaven/Collapse: music as devotional prayer, rupture, contemplation, surrender

Imagery from Lu's collaboration with Al-Arashi shaped the visual language of the May 7 performance, exploring the sacredness of land, the violence of erasure, and the tenderness of survival. Visiting Venice, Al-Arashi found striking parallels between the city's frescoed buildings and Lu's own creative evolution through her album So Help Me God — a shared sense of layered, evolving storytelling.

The installation draws on this connection: the heavens trickle down the walls of Palazzo Diedo, the fresco acting as both curtain and ceiling, concealment and decoration. The charcoal drawings on view are made from soil crushed and spread across the floor during the May performance, echoing Venice's own hidden strata — earth, water, marble, light — and Lu's earlier experiments making clay from soil gathered in North Carolina.

Across the installation, the body appears as vessel, archive, and site of power, moving through the witness, the devotee, the warrior, the lover, the ghost. PENUMBRA holds these states together, where identity remains fluid and wholeness is only ever hinted at.

Photo by Yumna Al-Arashi.

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BIO

Yumna Al-Arashi is an artist, filmmaker, and writer whose work straddles the intersection of history, identity, and power. Through striking visual compositions, her work reclaims lost narratives, challenges colonial legacies, and redefines the representation of women, the Arab world, and the environment with an unflinching, poetic gaze. Her imagery—steeped in myth, memory, and resistance—invokes a sense of timelessness, drawing from centuries-old traditions while speaking urgently to contemporary struggles. Through her lens, beauty becomes an act of defiance, and storytelling a form of reclamation.

Her debut institutional solo show opened in February 2026 at the renowned Huis Marseille Museum for Photography in Amsterdam. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, the International Center for Photography NYC, Helmhaus Zürich, Institut du Monde Arab Paris, and more. Her films and photographs have also been featured in global platforms like National Geographic, The New York Times, and The Guardian. Beyond the art world, she is a sought-after speaker and educator, using her platform to reshape conversations around representation, visual ethics, and the power of storytelling as a tool for change.

Her award-winning short film The 99 Names of God (2018) premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and her images of the Bolivian Cholitas graced the cover of Vogue Mexico & Latin America’s 20th Anniversary Issue, in 2020. Her film rage was nominated for the CIRCA Prize in 2024. Her first monograph, Aisha, was published by Edition Patrick Frey in Autumn 2024 and awarded The Most Beautiful Swiss Books Prize the same year.

Kelsey Lu is a classically trained cellist and polymuse from Charlotte, North Carolina. Her artistic practice flows comfortably at the intersection of visual art, performance, healing activism, and music. In addition to her solo work, she finds collaboration to be fundamental in the expansion of her practice, which has brought her to collaborations with musicians including Yves Tumor, Skrillex, and Solange; fine artists Kahlil Joseph and Wu Tsang; and brands such as Toyota, Swarovski, Jil Sander, and Gucci.

  • Photo by Marco Cappelletti

  • Photo by Marco Cappelletti

  • Photo by Marco Cappelletti

  • Photo by Marco Cappelletti

  • Photo by Marco Cappelletti

2026

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Palazzo Diedo
Berggruen
Arts & Culture

Contacts
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Fondamenta Diedo
Cannaregio 2386
30121 Venezia