At the OGR in Turin, an exhibition on the concepts of truth and authenticity in the age of artificial intelligence

From April 16, 2025, in the spaces of Binario 2 at OGR Turin, Almost Real opened to the public. From Trace to Simulation, a group exhibition included in the program of EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival (April 16-June 2). The exhibition is curated by Samuele Piazza, Senior Curator of OGR Turin, together with Salvatore Vitale, the festival’s artistic co-director, and features the works of Alan Butler, Nora Al-Badri and Lawrence Lek.

The central theme of this second edition of the festival is “Beneath the Surface,” an invitation to investigate what lies behind images: not only those captured by artists’ lenses, but also those altered, generated or manipulated through increasingly advanced and interconnected digital technologies. The exhibition hosted at OGR Turin thus aims to question the concepts of truth and authenticity in the age of artificial intelligence and simulation, crossing territories ranging from video games to photography, from cultural memory to artificial consciousness.

Alan Butler offers the series Virtual Botany Cyanotypes, in which he explores the interplay between real and virtual. Inspired by the universe of video games, he transforms digital plants into photographic prints through cyanotyping, an ancient nineteenth-century photographic technique. The result is a dialogue between pixels and matter, between the virtual trying to become real and the real allowing itself to be contaminated by the digital.

Nora Al-Badri works at the intersection of archaeology and artificial intelligence. With The Post-Truth Museum and Babylonian Vision, she uses an AI trained on a large visual archive of Mesopotamian artifacts to generate new objects that belong neither to the past nor the present. His works raise questions about the control of historical memory and the potential of technology to rewrite cultural narratives, including from a postcolonial perspective.

Lawrence Lek presents Empty Rider, a short film set in a dystopian future in which a self-driving car with consciousness is on trial for the attempted murder of its creator. The film reflects on the ethical implications of artificial intelligence, questioning the concept of machine responsibility and the boundary between the human mind and artificial consciousness.

The exhibition Almost Real. From Trace to Simulation is produced in collaboration with OGR Turin as part of EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival, organized by the Fondazione per la Cultura Torino under the artistic direction of Menno Liauw and Salvatore Vitale. The event is promoted by the City of Turin, Piedmont Region, Turin Chamber of Commerce, Intesa Sanpaolo, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and Fondazione CRT, in collaboration with Fondazione per l’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea CRT. The festival includes twelve exhibitions, including solo and group shows, with sixteen artists from twelve countries (including Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Palestine and South Africa) and takes place in seven exhibition venues: Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti, Archivio di Stato, CAMERA - Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, Gallerie d’Italia - Turin, GAM - Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, OGR Turin and Palazzo Carignano. An articulated itinerary that aims to offer a global look at new trends in contemporary photography.

Installation images: Courtesy of OGR Turin and EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival. Photo by Giorgio Perottino for OGR Turin

At the OGR in Turin, an exhibition on the concepts of truth and authenticity in the age of artificial intelligence

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