Suzanne Treister: Prophetic Dreaming Exhibition: 4 October 2025 – 12 April 2026

This autumn, Modern Art Oxford presents Prophetic Dreaming, the first major UK institutional retrospective by pioneering digital and para-disciplinary artist Suzanne Treister. Spanning over 40 years of her radical, visionary practice, the show traces Treister’s enduring engagement with the relationships between new technologies, networks of power, alternative belief systems and potential futures of humanity.

Prophetic Dreaming opens with a display of early paintings from the 1980s, including Venus on TV on the Moon (1986), intimating the techno-mystical nature of her later projects. The exhibition charts Treister’s early explorations with digital technology from her series Fictional Videogame Stills (1991-92), created on an Amiga computer, to SOFTWARE (1993-94), a series of painted boxes and floppy discs which imagine hypothetical software applications, foreshadowing the apps through which we now mediate our daily lives.

Prophetic Dreaming features a number of Treister’s expansive, multi-year projects. Time Travelling with Rosalind Brodsky (1995-2006) navigates the 20th and 21st centuries through Treister’s alter-ego via an interactive CD-Rom, exploring Brodsky’s electronic time-travelling costumes and devices, music videos, psychoanalytic case histories, cookery shows, and documentation from her time travel based research projects; GOLEM/LOEW: Artificial Life (2002), Operation Swanlake (2004) and HEXEN 2039 (2006).

In HEXEN 2.0 (2009-11) Treister connects cybernetics, surveillance, countercultural movements and internet histories through a group of alchemical diagrams and a Tarot deck, as a way of enabling viewers to envision alternative futures. Her recent project, HEXEN 5.0 (2023-25) continues this trajectory, critically examining AI, the climate crisis, and quantum science. Also featured in the exhibition is the immersive and data-visionary world of HFT The Gardener (2014-15), the post-futurist transmissions of SURVIVOR (F) (2016-19), and TECHNOSHAMANIC SYSTEMS (2020-23) which imagines models for a techno-spiritual future.

The exhibition debuts the Institute of Mystical Earth System Science (2025), a proposal for a new holistic field, which includes designs for over 200 global research institutes working towards restoration of the planet and the survival of humanity. A new offsite commission, AI Quantum Dreaming (2025), proposes a series of public sculptures for Oxford, developed through conversations with Oxford-based Quantum researchers and open-source AI software. Taking the form of a walking tour around Oxford, the work invites audiences to reflect on emerging technologies and how they might be used to enact positive futures.

This retrospective highlights the many astonishing, sometimes humorous and often unsettling moments of prophecy which have recurred throughout Treister’s career. Prophetic Dreaming reveals Treister’s prescient practice as a means of comprehending the complexities of the present while imagining new possibilities for what is yet to come.

The exhibition opens on 4 October 2025 and runs until 12 April 2026. It will be accompanied by a major new publication with contributions from Lars Bang Larson, Patricia Domínguez and Val Ravaglia, co-published with cosmogenesis. HEXEN 2.0 and 5.0 Tarot decks are available through cosmogenesis.

ENDS

Notes for Editors

For media enquiries contact Alison Wright PR, alison@ alisonwrightpr.com, +44 (0)7814 796 930 or Clare Stimpson, Head of Digital and Communications, [email protected], +44 (0)1865 813 826

About Suzanne Treister

Suzanne Treister (b. 1958 London UK) studied at St Martin’s School of Art, London (1978-1981) and Chelsea College of Art and Design, London (1981-1982). She is based in London and the French Pyrenees. Solo and group exhibitions include: 5th Industrial Art Biennial, locations across Croatia (2025); 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul (2025); The Warburg Institute, London (2025); Tate Modern, London (2025); Annely Juda Fine Art, London (2025); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2024); The Ryder, Madrid (2024); United Nations, New York (2024); 14th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai (2023); Museion Bolzano, Bolzano (2023); Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz (2023); Helsinki Biennial, Helsinki (2023); ARoS Kunstmuseum, Aarhus (2023); P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York (2023); Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2023); High Line, New York (2022); Plateforme 10, Lausanne (2022); Hayward Gallery Touring, locations across the UK (2020–2022); Albertinum, Dresden (2022); Somerset House, London (2022);

Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw (2022); 7th Athens Biennale, Athens (2021); Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz (2021); 34th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana (2021); Kunstmuseum Appenzell, Appenzell (2021); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2021); Yerevan Biennial, Yerevan (2020); 16th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2019); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2019); 9th Busan Biennale, Busan (2018); CAPC, Bordeaux (2018); EKKM, Tallinn (2018); CCCB, Barcelona (2018); ZKM, Karlsruhe (2018); IMMA, Dublin (2017); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017); Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal (2017); Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (2016); V&A Museum, London (2016); Bildmuseet, Umea (2016); Bard Hessel Museum, New York (2016); ICA, London (2015); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015).

About Modern Art Oxford

Located in one of the world’s great cities of learning, Modern Art Oxford is a leading contemporary art space with an international reputation for innovative and ambitious programming. We promote creativity in all its visual forms as an agent of social change. Our programmes, both in person and online, are shaped by a belief in dialogue between contemporary art and ideas and celebrate the relevance of contemporary visual culture to society today.

www.modernartoxford.org.uk | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke Street, Oxford, UK, OX1 1BP [email protected] 01865 722 733

Modern Art Oxford is supported by Arts Council England, Oxford City Council and Lavazza.