BEING HYPER HUMAN

BEING HYPER HUMAN is a collaborative exhibition that brings together photography and video works by students, alumni, and faculty from Fashion Institute of Technology and Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design, and Technology in Bengaluru, India.

In more ways than one, our worlds are closer than ever. We encounter images of distant places directly in the palm of our hands. Our sense of time oscillates between lived experience and its representation on our screens. Increasingly, we seek the image of reality more than reality itself. Photography plays a pivotal role in this flattening of the world—where performing for the camera becomes as ordinary as observing through it. With the rise of digital and social media platforms, we often have to become images before we can connect with others. This exhibition reflects on what it means to inhabit this hyper-image world, presenting works that examine our deepening entanglement with images: What relationship do we have with images of ourselves? What meanings of the present are generated by looking at them? Why are we unsettled when reality doesn’t match its image? And, what becomes of our being if being human is increasingly tagged to an image?