The phrase “the candy house,” as in the tale of Hansel and Gretel, symbolizes the Faustian bargain of convenience and connection at the expense of privacy and autonomy. In the original story, the candy house — constructed by an evil witch — is designed to lure vulnerable children, exploiting their desperation and hunger.
This exhibition explores how humans, entangled in the hyperfold* era, may find themselves “trapped” in a modern-day candy house of their own making. It poses a critical question: can we still purify and exorcise this haunted house of the digital age, or have we become the new witches lying in wait for lost prey?
Featuring works by Anca Bârjovanu, Ella Wang Olsson, Guy Bar-Sinai, Ioana Georgescu, Paul Barsch, Shai Datauker, Sophia Schullan, Tilman Hornig, and Xiaoyao Ma, through the interplay of design, technology, and art, Exorcise the Candy House examines the seductive allure and hidden dangers of the hyperfold. It invites viewers to reconsider the agency of the entities we create and inhabit, questioning whether redemption is possible — or even necessary — within a world of interconnected consciousness.
At its core, the exhibition disrupts conventional design paradigms, proposing that designed entities are not merely functional tools but contemplative instruments — portals for provoking progressive social design and reimagining digital spaces. It challenges us to confront the moral void of the hyperfold while envisioning a more compassionate path toward collective redemption. Rejecting purely functionalist perspectives, the show posits design as an act of exorcism.
It asks: What if digital spaces, rather than mirroring hierarchies, became gardens of radical care? Could treating AI with dignity catalyze liberation for historically marginalized human voices? Can surveillance infrastructures pivot from a mechanism of control to architectures of admiration? To exorcise is not to destroy, but to reclaim — to reimagine the candy house as a commune.
Will we remain witches, feasting on the lost? Become mere snacks, feeding a greedy capitalist system? Or will we transform into sisters (like the sister who saved her brother in the fairytale) — guardians of a newborn consciousness that honors all beings, human, non-human, machine, and data, as kin?
*Hyperfold: A state in which humans, IoT, AI, humanoids, minerals, and other agents — alongside data — are super-covalently folded into a collective being. This conscious entity operates with its own will, functioning within compressed and accelerated time. (Concept by Wumen.)
When writing this text, Wumen was helped by Grammar, Chat GPT, and Deep Seek; she is grateful but also annoyed at the same time.
Work Description: POSE is a short music surveillance video shot in the metro in Shanghai. The video features a young e-girl walking nonchalantly in her own world in the underground metro corridors. Each time she sees a security camera she begins to pose for it. The video is playful and asks viewers to change their perspectives on surveillance by treating the security cameras as selfie cameras.
Biography: 3lla Wang Olsson is a Swedish Chinese multidisciplinary artist working with flow, reflection and reaction. Growing through mind maps, visions and reality, 3lla’s work often embodies the middle ground that exists as a result of contrasting forces: east vs west, male vs female, digital vs analog. Constantly searching for belonging in an increasingly lonesome world, 3lla practices collaboration and improvisation openly, often working within club spaces and the local people who give it life. 3lla’s work can be experienced through performance, video, painting and photography.
Work Description: The question of “Who am I?” or “Who do I want to be?” is difficult to answer for individuals who constantly evolve. Lately, I’ve wondered where personal change begins and how we can navigate, influence, and monitor its development. Meanwhile, the boundaries between our physical and digital existence dissolve as we become more united with our technological devices. The answer stared back at me through my screen.
All these thoughts, ideas, works, experiences, inspirations, people, and memories are stored in my blue folders — the most simplified form of modern identity, neatly arranged. They serve as a true digital parallel to my physical existence, reflecting who I was, who I am, and who I might become.
Work Description: Where is it? features an Apple AirTag buried within a stack of hay, accompanied by an iPhone displaying its precise location via the Find My app. The work humorously contrasts the metaphor of searching for a needle in a haystack with modern technology’s precision, while also reflecting on society’s growing obsession with tracking. From misplaced objects to parents secretly placing AirTags in their children’s backpacks, the piece questions how far we are willing to go in our pursuit of control and convenience.
Biography: Shai Datauker (b. 1998, he/him) is an Amsterdam-based conceptual and visual artist who graduated from the DesignLab department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2023. Growing up in a multicultural household, Shai’s curiosity and sense of necessity shape his research-driven practice, driving him to question the things we surround ourselves with and why.
His artistic research explores contemporary societal dynamics, with a focus on consumerist and capitalist ideals. Using technology as a tool, he investigates overlooked everyday elements that shape our choices and behaviors, aiming to uncover their significance for a more nuanced understanding of the world we inhabit.
Work Description: Stuck between a peaceful sleep and the overwhelming anxiety of hearing today’s news. I always get sleep paralysis when I am stressed. Dumbfounded at a crossroad of indecisive decisions, my Instagram tells me my candles are toxic and I want to go home but I am scared. Deep in the haze of sleep, it all seems to find a moment of tranquility, in reality the last reel I watched is playing on repeat somewhere behind my frontal lobe.
The work ´Sleeping Away´ casts a frozen moment in time by creating an eerie scenery where static elements meet the fluctuating sound waves. Playing with contrasting materials such as overflowing silk like textile paired with the rough plaster dress, the sculpture explores the fragile tension between vulnerability and strength. The fleeting sounds and the flowing textile paired together with the sculpture enchanted by a serene sleep, create a dream-like atmosphere, where themes of alienation, connectivity and techno romanticism are explored.
The work is developed and executed together with Ioana Georgescu. Special thanks for technical assistance to Niels Gosling.
Biography: Anca Bârjovanu (1998, RO) is a multidisciplinary visual artist and jewellery maker based in The Hague, The Netherlands. Anca graduated in 2021 from The Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague, followed by a master in Jewelry Design at The Royal Academy in Antwerp. She previously worked for the jewelry company Tiffany and Co as the lead polisher and goldsmith in training where she deepened her expertise in fine metals. Currently, Anca is part of the art incubator ‘‘See Lab’’ where she works for the communication team and shares a studio. Her work has been part of various group shows, locally and internationally, such as: ‘Every moment a junction’ at Nest, NL; ‘In Transit’ Munich Jewellery Week, GER; ‘Light Clarity Avocado Salad In The Morning’ at Jecza Gallery, Timisoara, RO, etc.; Alternatively, she worked as guest lecturer for Leiden University and held workshops at Nest, The Balcony and See Lab in The Hague, NL. In 2021 she co-founded the alternative art platform Milk & Cereals which organizes events, workshops and exhibitions in the benefit of emerging artists.
Ioana Georgescu is a product designer whose work explores the intersection of materiality, sustainability, and human connection. Graduating in 2023 with an Integrated Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Product Design from UAUIM (University of Architecture in Bucharest), her practice is driven by creating impactful and innovative solutions using a sustainable practice. In 2020, her award-winning project ping-pong table made from recycled plastic and exhibited at Romanian Design Week sparked her exploration of different materials following workshops for production processes of recycled and reusable materials and 3D printing. In her graduation project about social design and how design impacts humanity, Ioana uses an extensive research base and concentrates on how to find innovative solutions for problems that people encounter every day. Ioana thrives in collaboration with people from various fields to draw inspiration and develop creative and impactful designs.
Work Description: “Immer Müde und Scheiss Wetter in New York” (Always tired and shitty weather in New York) is a series of autobiographical umbrella works that show snapshots of the artists sleeping. While working on a new New Scenario project during a residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York City, the artists secretly photographed each other in states of rest and sleepiness after long days and nights in the city.
New York can be exhausting, and it often rains cats and dogs. The action-poor work, which is charged by the flexible image carriers, nonchalantly refers to fluid transitions between art and everyday life, activity and passivity, temporary retreat and publicity. The two artists counter the pressure to make efficient use of the limited duration of a working stay, to establish networks and develop new things, with a defiant yawn that insists on the specific time economies of artistic production processes.
The standstill on display also seems like a tongue-in-cheek farewell to the still-powerful myth of the studio as an auratic site of artistic production. An umbrella is like sleep: you only miss it when you really need it.
Biography: Paul Barsch (*1982) and Tilman Hornig (*1980) have been working in collaborative art and exhibition projects in addition to their solo art practices since 2013. They are founders of NEW SCENARIO (newscenario.net), a curatorial project and digital platform for artistic and experimental non-white-cube exhibition formats, as well as the conceptual free-form music project DRONE OPERATØR. Their collaborative artistic works and work series have been shown in numerous international exhibitions and institutions.
Work Description: The digital media era has brought us the promise of anarchy, freedom of knowledge, and a place to be whoever we choose to be. While the promise of anarchy depends on our ability as human beings to trust each other, digital media is unable to fulfill this assurance.
Growing up during the rise of the digital revolution, I have been shaped by the tension between the promise of complete freedom and an ongoing suspicion of the other. This love-hate relationship with digital media, and the anxiety it produces, informs my work.
The Virtual Kingdom of Negligible Objects stretches the boundaries between man and object in the age of digital media. The project reimagines analog, neglected, everyday objects through the lens of the digital world, where they can celebrate their own existence and ask existential questions about their future in an increasingly digital space.
Biography: Guy Bar-Sinai (Israel) is a multidisciplinary designer who holds a Master’s degree in Contextual Design from the Design Academy Eindhoven. His works investigate the tension between culture, artifacts, and social trends through personal experience. He is fascinated by material and non-material culture and the encounters that arise between them, thanks to contemporary digital culture. His works range from physical objects to digital art, exploring the cultural and social contexts influenced by them.
Work Description: PERSONA: Echo Chamber emerges from the artist’s experience of re-entering her home country, coinciding with AI’s explosive growth in both digital and physical realms. Through a series of digitally constructed environments—an airplane cabin, a dining room, an old residential building—the work explores how AI-generated iterations of the artist’s identity multiply and interact, creating scenarios that are both unsettling and familiar.
The work examines our contemporary condition, where identity becomes increasingly fluid and reproducible. By populating everyday spaces with algorithmic echoes of herself, Xiaoyao creates an immersive experience that reflects the current digital paradigm, where authenticity and simulation become indistinguishable. These multiplied selves, while sourced from the artist’s image, diverge into entities that are both intimately connected to and detached from their origin, challenging definitions of selfhood in an age where the algorithm creates a paradoxical situation—one where the pursuit of uniqueness leads to increasing similarity.
Biography: Xiaoyao Ma graduated from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. She currently works and lives in Shanghai/Beijing. Her artistic practice explores the boundaries between the virtual and the real, the individual and the other. She is passionate about learning how computers think and collaborating with them in her creative process. She questions the construction of the real world through the alienation of the self and creates experiences that transcend dimensions.
