New Humans

A timely exploration of artists’ enduring preoccupation with what it means to be human in the face of sweeping technological change

New Humans traces a diagonal history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through the work of more than 150 artists, writers, scientists, architects, and filmmakers, highlighting key moments when dramatic technological and social changes spurred new conceptions of humanity and new visions for its possible futures.

The book – and its accompanying exhibition that will inaugurate the New Museum’s expanded building designed by OMA/Rem Koolhaas and Shohei Shigematsu – connects the age of automatons to the burgeoning era of generative AI and brings together a cavalcade of humans becoming machines and machines becoming human.

Features new and recent works by: Sophia Al-Maria, Lucy Beech, Cyprien Gaillard, Pierre Huyghe, Tau Lewis, Daria Martin, Wangechi Mutu, Precious Okoyomon, Berenice Olmedo, Philippe Parreno, Hito Steyerl, Jamian Juliano-Villani, and Anicka Yi in the context of works by twentieth-century artists and cultural figures including Francis Bacon, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Salvador Dalí, Ibrahim El-Salahi, H.R. Giger, Kiki Kogelnik, Hannah Höch, Tatsuo Ikeda, Gyula Kosice, El Lissitzky, Lennart Nilsson, Eduardo Paolozzi, Carlo Rambaldi, Germaine Richier, and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

Essays by: Aaron Betsky, Gary Carrion-Murayari, Erin Christovale, Meghan Forbes, Hal Foster, Sophie Lewis, Eric Michaud, Katy Siegel, McKenzie Wark, and Gary Zhexi Zhang