Exhibition on view:
At The Wrong Biennale
November 1st, 2025 – March 31st, 2026

Curated by:
Cansu Peker

Artists:
Clayton Campbell (Lead Artist)
Cari Ann Shim Sham*
Gzhenka’s Fun House
Emi Kusano
Vince Fraser
Stacie Ant
Lasergun Factory

Location:
Online

*Ex Voto - Miracle Story # 1 by Clayton Campbell*
*"When our first child was born, I just never, never had imagined or had any idea what it was really like, to see a human being arrive in the world. And it was miraculous."*

Making Our Miracles is a collaborative project by artist Clayton Campbell and curator Cansu Peker, who will together conceptualize and present a series of contemporary digital ex voto art works created by a cohort of international artists using AI-assisted art in a unique participatory project.

Making Our Miracles has been invited to be part of the 7th edition of The Wrong Biennale, taking place from November 1st, 2025, to March 31st, 2026. The Wrong Bienniale is dedicated to artistically exploring the transformative potential of AI-generated art, video, and sound created by artists.

Making our Miracles began with Clayton Campbell’s interest in traditional ex-voto painting, which he studied while living and working in New Mexico in the 1980s. Historically, ex-voto offerings are handmade devotional objects created by or for individuals who, upon experiencing a miracle, would make a vow and commemorate it visually. Ex-votos have provided people with a sense of refuge and hope, capturing moments of personal transformation and spiritual resilience. While more recently attached to the practice of Catholicism, ex-voto paintings developed from votive rituals date back to ancient pagan beliefs of Rome, Mesopotamia, Egypt and the northern Celtic tribal world.

In the making of a traditional ex-voto, a person would pray to a saint for a miracle, and if the prayer was answered, commission an artist to create an ex-voto. In Mexico and New Mexico, they became a populist art form, often painted by the person themselves as expressions of faith meant to evidence divine intervention within daily life. These votive paintings depict deeply personal narratives, recounting details and dates of specific events that occurred along with imagery of the miraculous event.

In secular culture, a miracle is typically understood as an extraordinary event that seems inexplicable by natural laws, often described as an extremely unlikely or an instead. Or it is an occurrence that evokes a sense of wonder and amazement, even without attributing it to divine intervention. It can be a highly improbable positive outcome that defies typical expectations, something so simple that it defies metaphysics altogether.

The Project

Making our Miracles is a contemporary exploration of traditional devotional art. The project invites people to share their stories of transformation, miracles, and visionary epiphanies in our uncertain, rapidly shifting world. A cohort of international digital artists will respond to these stories, using AI assisted digital techniques to create unique contemporary digital art works that reference the ex-voto tradition.

The outcomes will be presented as a group exhibition in The Wrong Bienniale in the Digital Arts Blog’s pavilion. The overarching theme for the 2025 Wrong Bienniale is the use of AI assisted technology, which is a significant part of each artists’ practice in Making our Miracles.

An open call through our platforms invites people from around the globe to submit stories and images that hold deep personal significance as the basis of Making Our Miracles. These submissions become the creative foundation for a series of contemporary digital ex-votos, created using AI-assisted art. Curator Cansu Peker will assign stories to the cohort of artists who will then respond to them. In the exhibition, the stories will be presented along with the digital art works the cohort create for Making our Miracles.

Making Our Miracles also reflects issues of faith during our time of enormous spiritual, social, environmental, and political change.

As a public project, we will ask questions through writing and research, utilizing AI assisted artmaking to explore how a visual lens is employed to receive and process the extraordinary stories the project receives.

Curatorial Statement by Cansu Peker

Miracles defy logic, resist reason, and can only be felt — a rush of warmth, a shiver of connection, an unshakable knowing that something greater has moved through you. Across time and cultures, we’ve sought ways to make sense of these moments of grace, to give them form, to share them with others.

Ex-voto paintings have long served as sacred vessels for these extraordinary stories. Rooted in ancient traditions, these devotional artworks were created to honor miraculous events, to give thanks, and to bear testimony. With their symbolic imagery and personal narratives, they became offerings of faith and public records of the divine breaking into the everyday.

In Making Our Miracles, the ex-voto tradition is reimagined through a unique collaboration of storytellers, artists, and the artificial mind. Here, the miracle is no longer confined to a single experience; it is transformed into a shared creation. Through this process, our collective hopes, fears, and gratitude are carried forward, preserving the miraculous in a new, tangible form.

The storytellers offer the spark — moments of transformation, extraordinary events, or quiet epiphanies that shift the course of a life. The artists, moved by these stories, imagine how to translate someone else’s miracle into visual form, bringing their own sensitivity and humanity to the process. Then, the machine steps in; unbound by the weight of tradition, a collaborator free to render what words cannot fully express.

In the hands of these artists, the artificial mind becomes a way to hold the intangible, to paint what cannot be painted, to say what cannot be said. The machine takes what is fragile, flickering, untouchable, and gives it form — a form that connects us all. It becomes the ultimate medium for our most sacred truths, the thread that stitches us together across borders, across time.

Here, in this space, the stories are no longer yours or mine — they belong to all of us. The act of sharing transforms them, uniting us in a collective awe. Through this process, the ex-voto tradition lives on, not as an artifact of the past, but as an evolving, living practice in the digital age.

The machine reveals what’s hidden: a universal language of faith, gratitude, and wonder. And perhaps that is the greatest miracle of all — not that AI has learned to create, but that it has learned to listen. It reflects the light within us back to the world, weaving connection, and bringing us closer than we’ve ever been.

Because miracles, when shared, don’t simply remain as they are. They ripple outward, inspiring others to see the extraordinary within their own lives. And in that moment, they too begin to make their own miracles.

Lead Artist Statement by Clayton Campbell

I began studying the ex-voto tradition of painting in the 1980’s when I was living and working in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There is still a living tradition of miracles very much alive in contemporary celebrations that take place. For example, on Easter pilgrims to the Sanctuary in Chimayo, New Mexico bring ex votos to offer thanks for the Milagros (miracles) they have experienced. Because I have been involved with image/text in my own work, I was drawn to the combination of narrative and image in ex voto painting. But the authenticity and honesty of ex voto work that I saw in Chimayo never left my memory either.

My work centers how we live in a time of enormous creative, social, environmental, and spiritual change. In my practice I’m seeking to find alignment with the meanings behind these transformations by making art that explores the lives and behavior of ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. I developed Making Our Miracles in this spirit. In my career, I have developed several participatory projects. I invited curator Cansu Peker to collaborate with me to realize this project, involving more artists who would respond to the miracle stories we would solicit from the public.

In thinking about modern day miracles, and what might come of this project, there are several potential outcomes:

Making the Ineffable Knowable: The primary purpose of contemporary ex votos is to make the ineffable knowable. By using AI and digital technology, artists can explore and interpret phenomena that were once considered beyond human understanding. These works offer new ways to experience and reflect on the miraculous, whether it be a personal transformation, a scientific discovery, or a profound mystery of existence.

Fostering Connection and Understanding: Contemporary ex votos also seek to foster connection and understanding among viewers. By making complex and abstract concepts more accessible, these works invite viewers to engage with the miraculous in their own lives. They encourage reflection, gratitude, and a sense of wonder, reinforcing the idea that the miraculous is not confined to the realm of religion but is a fundamental part of the human experience.

Celebrating Human Ingenuity: Finally, contemporary ex votos celebrate the ingenuity and creativity of humanity. They acknowledge the role of technology in expanding our understanding of the world and offer gratitude for the discoveries and innovations that make this possible. In doing so, they remind us of the potential for transformation and the enduring power of the human spirit.

Finally, contemporary digital artwork exploring ex votos represent a reimagining of a centuries-old tradition, using AI and digital technology to explore and make sense of the miraculous. By shifting the focus from religious to secular themes, these works offer new ways to interpret and share experiences of wonder and transformation. Through generative art, interactive installations, and data visualization, artists will be creating ex votos that make the ineffable knowable, fostering connection and understanding among viewers. In celebrating human ingenuity and the potential for transformation, contemporary ex votos remind us of the enduring power of the miraculous in our lives. Now more than ever, we need this sense of wonder in our lives.

Biographies

Cansu Peker (Curator)

Raised in Istanbul and living in New York, Cansu Peker is a writer and curator dedicated to exploring the intersection of art and technology. In 2023, she founded Digital Arts Blog, a platform committed to fostering inclusivity and accessibility for digital artists from all backgrounds. She curated the official pavilion of Digital Arts Blog for The Wrong Biennale, "We’ve been dreaming about a magical jungle," a virtual art exhibition featuring 11 visionary digital artists from diverse backgrounds. This collection included Clayton Campbell’s work and explored the human essence that seeks the organic in the digital and the self in nature, celebrating empowerment, self-discovery, and intimacy.

Clayton Campbell (Lead Artist)

Born and raised in New York, Clayton Campbell was an early innovator with photo-based technologies including xerox, photostatic printing, and mail art projects. Philosophically he found an affinity with the Pictures Generation, combining social and political critique with contemporary representational narrative styles and languages. After moving to Los Angeles, in 1995 he began working with the first commercially available digital cameras and computer graphics software. He collaborated with the growing digital, video, and technology scene, and was one of the first artists to experiment and use corruption (or glitching) in his digital photo- based art works.

Participating Artists

Cari Ann Shim Sham*

Cari Ann Shim Sham* is here to move things.

Her art acts as a window to the soul, a mirror for reflection, a warm refuge for meditation, a generator for embodiment, and a sacred space for healing.

She is part of the Techspressionist movement, having exhibited with Kingsborough Art Museum, Loop Art Critique, Li Ting Gallery, Superlative Gallery, Las Lagunas Art, and has generative artwork in the Mud Foundation’s permanent collection.

She works with AI as an oracle and is currently creating an AI Choreographer. Making films, music videos, and video art since the 90’s, she is a recipient of two Telly Awards with four films in the Routeledge Performance Archive and the first video artist to redesign Rauschenberg's 'Shiner' for "Set & Reset, Reset" by the Trisha Brown company.

Recently featured in Dance Magazine for her long term collaboration with David Roussève as filmmaker and video artist, her live projection mapping and interactive video artwork is at the heart of the new feature documentary film about Loïe Fuller, Obsessed with Light (2023).

Gzhenka’s Fun House

Gzhenka’s Fun House welcomes you to a perfect world of eerie and uncanny art — currently based in Lithuania, Gzhenka works a visual effects artist in movie industry in addition to creating photorealistic AI art, also known as synthography. Fully immersed in the possibilities of artificial intelligence art, the artist delves into the depths of her inner thoughts and draws inspiration from her dreams. She strives to transcend the confines of daily life and explore the symbols that hold personal significance in her art.

Emi Kusano

Emi Kusano is a Tokyo-based multidisciplinary artist whose work blends the worlds of AI, nostalgia, and contemporary culture. With a passion for exploring the intersections of retro-futurism and modern technology, Emi uses AI to create hyperrealistic representations of collective and individual memories, making her art a powerful reflection of the human experience.

Vince Fraser

Vince Fraser is a digital artist and illustrator with over 20 years of experience in the creative industry. Known for blending a variety of skills, including film and motion, he believes in confronting current social, political, and cultural realities with an imaginative yet critical lens, using his art as a tool for change. At the heart of Vince’s work lies Afro-surrealism — a creative approach that allows him to stay grounded in the present while also honoring the historical and cultural layers that have shaped the African diaspora. This approach helps him weave historical narratives and cultural heritage into his pieces, acknowledging the resilience and strength that have emerged from historical struggles.

Stacie Ant

A fascinating journey from playing The Sims to creating spectacular digital art – Stacie Ant is a digital artist and curator who’s work is known for its humorous and satirical approach to social commentary on the fast-paced digital lifestyle of the modern world. Creating AR works and 3D animation art, she explores digital worlds and beings that can only exist in the virtual realm. The artist has collaborated with major fashion brands such as Adidas, Nike, and Adrianna Hot Couture, and her personal work has been exhibited internationally at prestigious events including Miami Art Basel, Milan Fashion Week, and SXSW.

Lasergun Factory

Jason Scuderi, the creative behind Lasergun Factory, is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and director based in Tokyo. As Lasergun Factory, Jason explores the relationship between humanity and the digital world, using a unique techno-infused style to explore themes like artificial intelligence, social dynamics, and cultural shifts. With a background as a Creative/Art Director, Jason has worked with some of the world's most recognized brands, including Reebok, Nike, Chanel, and the NBA. His work has been showcased in global glitch-art shows and the artist has shared his insights as a guest speaker at various exhibits.

Making Our Miracles has been invited to be part of the 7th edition of The Wrong Biennale, taking place from November 1st, 2025, to March 31st, 2026. This edition of The Wrong Biennale is dedicated to artistically exploring the transformative potential of AI-generated art, video, and sound created by artists.