VENICE.- At a time when environmental change and technological innovation are reshaping the way we experience the world, CYFEST 17 – Natura Naturans: Human Beings, Nature, Landscape brings together historical avant-garde practices and contemporary media art in an exhibition exploring the evolving relationship between humans, nature, and technology.
On view through 31 August 2026 at CREA Cantieri del Contemporaneo on the island of Giudecca, the exhibition brings together international artists and works from the Frants Family Collection, connecting painting, movement, light, sound, algorithms, and technological systems through a shared focus on transformation and perception.
Curated by CYLAND MediaArtLab in collaboration with Ca' Foscari University of Venice and the Center for Studies on the Arts of Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus (CSAR), the exhibition takes its title from Natura Naturans, the philosophical concept of nature as a generative force in continuous transformation. Matter, energy, time, and perception are presented not as separate elements, but as interconnected processes.
The exhibition creates an unexpected bridge between twentieth-century avant-garde and Russian and Soviet art, represented through the Frants Family Collection, and contemporary practices involving automation, kinetic systems, video, artificial intelligence, algorithms, and interactive technologies. Ideas explored by earlier generations of artists around movement, light, matter, and perception are reinterpreted through the technological languages of the present.
Among the works on view, Anna Frants' automated kinetic drawings explore the relationship between light, movement, and time. Jaanika Peerna addresses the fragility of glaciers and the urgency of climate change, while Tuula Närhinen imagines bird species adapting to plastic-polluted environments, using fiction to reflect on ecological transformation.
In Mariateresa Sartori's work, wind becomes an invisible author, producing drawings through an anemometer and creating a delicate balance between natural forces, chance, and human intervention. Elena Gubanova and Ivan Govorkov revisit the experimental spirit of the avant-garde through a large-scale kinetic installation, while the internationally recognised collective AES+F explores embodiment, identity, and perception in the digital age through imagery suspended between the fantastical and the unsettling.
The exhibition also features works by Andy Barrt, Alexandra Dementieva, Alexey Grachev, Sergey Kishchenko, Sergei Komarov & Lidiia Griaznova, Alexei Kostroma, Valery Koshlyakov, Linda Loh, Natalia Lyakh, Dmitriy Shishov, Eric Vernhes, and Mathieu Zurstrassen, offering a broad perspective on contemporary media art across generations and geographical contexts.
CYFEST 17 extends beyond the exhibition space through a programme of talks, performances, and screenings developed in collaboration with Ca' Foscari University of Venice. As part of Art Night Venezia, the festival presented the 50th edition of LASER Talk CYLAND, dedicated to “hybrid ecologies,” alongside Andy Barrt's sculptural performance The Snow Flower of the North and the third edition of Sleepless Video Art Night, an international video art marathon exploring environmental crisis, migration, collective memory, and possible futures.
Founded in 2007, CYFEST is an international nomadic platform connecting artists, curators, engineers, programmers, and researchers at the intersection of art, science, and technology. After beginning its 17th edition in Thessaloniki in late 2025, the festival continues in Venice with an exhibition that places historical artistic research alongside some of the most urgent questions surrounding ecological change and technological transformation.
CYFEST 17 – Natura Naturans: Human Beings, Nature, Landscape is on view through 31 August 2026 at CREA Cantieri del Contemporaneo, Giudecca 211/B, Venice.