Exhibitions
Off-Centre
Ismini Kyritsis is a curator and art historian working at the intersection of art, science, and ecology. With a specific interest in the ecological and societal impact of digital technologies, her curatorial practice takes an ecosystemic turn shaping connections between different entities, disciplines and practices. Through exhibitions, research, and residencies, she fosters dialogue between human, natural, and technological entities while developing curatorial methodologies that respond to ecological and ethical uncertainties.
Ismini holds a Masters degree in Arts and Culture (Museums and Collectiosn) from Leiden University (2023) and a postgraduate degree in Curatorial Studies form the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (2024). In recent years she has co-curated exhibitions and public programs in Kusthal Ghent (BE), Het Paviljoen (BE), Vleeshal (NL), iMAL (BE) and TINC (KR). She is currently part of Off-Centre, a collective of art workers bringing visibility to local art initiatives within the neighborhoods of Brussels through public tours and workshops. With a focus on artist-run spaces, its members aspire to foster community engagement, encourage mutual support, and create opportunities to learn from local collectives who demonstrate resilience in face of cultural and economic challenges.
Contact: isminikyritsis@gmail.com
Über-marionette
TINC (This is not a church) (KR)
Sept. 15th - Oct. 29th, 2025
Link: https://www.instagram.com/this_is_not_a_church/p/DPngtosk1uD/
Artists: Elie Bolard, Murphy Yum
Text by Ismini Kyritsis
In the early 20th century, Edward Gordon Craig, a visionary English theatre practitioner and theorist, envisioned what he called the Über-marionette- an autonomous puppet that could transcend human imperfections. With a belief that human emotions and inconsistencies weakened the purity of theatrical art, Graig saw in the Über-marionette a superior performer, a "deathlike beauty", lingering between presence and absence which can embody the diachronic perfection that life fails to achieve.
Although Graig’s ideals were never realized, his visions of a divine automaton surpassing humanity, resonates deeply with our technological realities. Once meant to optimize human activity, stripping it out of its flaws and limitations, contemporary technologies are taking centre stage blurring the lines between human, nature and machines. Using the metaphor Graig’s Über-marionette Murphy Yum and Élie Bolard re-imagine our relationship with machines as staged encounters of “ weird and eerie”.
Bringing their individual practices in dialogue for the first time Murphy’s and Élie’s works, are performing a "Pas de Deux" of organic and artificial movement. Evoking a mixed feeling of disturbance and familiarity their coalition proposes an alternative discourse on automation; one that resists efficiency in favor of poetic dysfunction.
Murphy’s practice explores the psychological dependency on mechanized objects through sculptural interventions that breathe new, often absurd life into discarded domestic appliances. A letter written by a programmed sawing- machine, a cloud appearing through a broken window, a piano stuck in between walls are all ghostly echoes of human presence. Now, these once personal-belongings that reflected individual wishes and dreams, are trapped in a liminal space between human expression and automated intelligence.
On the other hand, Élie manipulates programming and algorithmic logic through DIY assemblages of human-machine interactions. Reflecting on issues around labour, consumerism and commodification of technologies his practice is critiquing the standardised systems and human processes that have brought our ecologies and social ethics to the brink of collapse. Almost like commenting on their own ironic obsession for optimization, Bolard's machines are acting out in an attempt to reclaim their agency and voice in the human world.
In Über-marionette Murphy’s haunted memories and Élie’s rebellious machines intertwine in an uncanny theatrical encounter of presence and absence; vulnerability, and power; order and chaos. Programmed to respond to each other and to the presence of the visitors, they produce moments of small disruptions of technological and human logic, leaving the visitor wandering between dream and reality.
Centre stage in the exhibition takes the Wolf-Marionette, Murphy’s and Élie’ first collaborative work. Bringing Graig’s vision into contemporary discussions, the AI-driven kinetic sculpture reflects the irony behind humanity’s modern dream of domination over nature. Exposing its rather human-like vulnerability, muttering in its sleep, the mechanical wolf becomes a symbol of the interconnectedness between human, natural and technological forces. Opposing Graig' s dream of technological domination, Murphy Yum’and Élie Bolard’s vision brings into balance a shared intelligence between the three entities. Together they dream not of perfection but reveal the beauty in imbalance and the intelligence in hidden imperfections of nature and machines.