The Second Guess: Body Anxiety in the Age of AI
Exhibition on view:
January 25th – March 16th, 2025
Curated by:
Anika Meier
Margaret Murphy
Leah Schrager
Location:
Online
nicole ruggiero, how the internet changed my life, molly soda, 2021
Growing up as a girl at the age of internet has come with its own set of challenges — comparison, judgment, and an ever-present awareness of our bodies in ways that often felt unhealthy. Fast forward ten years, and we're in the era of AI, where those same anxieties have evolved, taking on new dimensions. The Second-Guess: Body Anxiety in the Age of AI, revisits these themes and sheds light on issues that remain stigmatized yet deeply relevant.
Curated by Anika Meier, Margaret Murphy, and Leah Schrager, this exhibition marks the 10th anniversary of Body Anxiety, an influential online show from 2015. Back then, the conversation centered on self-representation, censorship, and the emergence of what became known as “selfie feminism.” Now, in 2025, those discussions continue but with a new urgency. As deepfakes blur the lines between reality and fabrication, and AI-generated images challenge concepts of consent and authenticity, The Second-Guess asks: what does it mean to exist, and to be seen, in the age of artificial intelligence?
leah schrager, infinity selfie, 2018
In 2015, platforms like Tumblr and Instagram were spaces where artists explored gender, performance, and digital embodiment. Women artists in particular used social media to claim ownership over their images while simultaneously battling censorship. The visual language of that era; soft pinks, leg hair, blood-stained underwear, challenged traditional notions of femininity and beauty.
Now, a decade later, the landscape has changed. AI-generated avatars, deepfake scandals, and algorithmic biases complicate the conversation. If posting a selfie once felt like a radical act of self-expression, today, it comes with an added layer of unease. Where does the human end and the machine begin? Who controls how our digital selves are used, manipulated, or erased?
kira xonorika, melting pot, 2024
Unlike its predecessor, which lived entirely on a website, The Second-Guess expands into the metaverse, Substack, and NFT platforms like objkt.com. This evolution reflects the shifting nature of digital art spaces, where artists navigate both new creative possibilities and new ethical dilemmas.
The exhibition features more than 40 artists, spanning generations from the 1940s to the 2000s. This intergenerational dialogue is crucial — the exhibition offers perspectives from those who witnessed the birth of digital art alongside those who have never known a world without it. From pioneers like Lynn Hershman Leeson to contemporary voices like Nadya Tolokonnikova (Pussy Riot) and Nicole Ruggiero, the lineup underscores the ongoing struggle for autonomy in digital spaces.
The Second-Guess unfolds across five thematic chapters:
(Pre-)Cyberfeminism – Tracing early feminist engagements with technology.
A Girl Online – Exploring digital self-representation and gendered embodiment.
Second-Guess – Investigating self-doubt and surveillance in the AI era.
Prompt Baby – Examining AI-generated identities and the tension between authorship and automation.
Values – Questioning ethical concerns and the power dynamics of digital visibility.
In a world where AI is reshaping creativity, identity, and control over our own images, exhibitions like The Second-Guess serve as critical interventions. They force us to confront the ways technology amplifies body anxiety, particularly for those whose bodies have always been subject to scrutiny. This show is about power, representation, and the right to exist on our own terms.
The Second-Guess: Body Anxiety in the Age of AI runs through March 16, 2025 at virtual.hek.ch. Whether you grew up in the era of Tumblr feminism or are just starting to navigate these conversations, this exhibition offers a necessary reflection on where we’ve been and where we’re headed next.
sarah friend, prompt baby, 2024
Participating Artists:
Addie Wagenknecht, Ana María Caballero & Melissa Wiederrecht, Ann Hirsch, Ann Hirsch & Maya Man, Anna Ehrenstein, Arvida Byström, Avery Gia Sophie Schramm, Faith 'Aya' Umoh, Bianca Kennedy, Carla Gannis, Claudia Hart, Connie Bakshi, Emi Kusano, Gretchen Andrew, Gretta Louw, Kika Nicolela, Kira Xonorika, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Leah Schrager, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Margaret Murphy, Marisa Olson, Martina Menegon, Maya Man, Mel E. Logan & lizvlx (UBERMORGEN), Monika Fleischmann, Nadya Tolokonnikova (Pussy Riot), Nancy Burson, Nicole Ruggiero, OONA, Operator & Anika Meier, Remi Koebel, Sarah Friend, Sougwen Chung, and UBERMORGEN
About Curators:
Anika Meier
Anika Meier is a writer and curator specializing in digital art and internet culture. She lives and works in Hamburg and Berlin, Germany, and teaches at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, Class of UBERMORGEN, Department of Digital Art.
Among others, she wrote columns for Monopol and Kunstforum, built up KÖNIG DIGITAL for KÖNIG GALERIE, worked with CIRCA and Tezos on Marina Abramović‘s first NFT Drop, and with Herbert W. Franke on his NFT Drop MATH ART on Quantum. She was on the curation board of Art Blocks and is on the advisory board of Haus der Elektronischen Künste in Basel.
She is also a concept artist who creates text-based works that critically reflect value in the post-digital age, such as TWEETS FROM TWITTER, LOST FUTURES and TALE AS OLD AS TIME. She created UNSIGNED (2022) together with Operator, a collection of 100 signatures from women and non-binary artists to reverse the current negative value of the signatures through their transformation into artworks themselves.
Her most recent curated exhibitions include LeeMullican.PCX at FeralFile, Who Is Online? Game Art in the Age of Post-NFTism at HEK Basel (Virtual), Art NFT Linz at Francisco Carolinum in Linz, and Tribute to Herbert W. Franke (co-curated with Susanne Päch).
Her exhibitions have been written about, and her writing has been published in, among others, artnet, Hyperallergic, Monopol, Kunstforum, Spiegel, Tagesschau, and Right Click Save.
anika meier, tale as old as time, 2024
Margaret Murphy
Margaret Murphy is an artist based in Los Angeles, California. Murphy earned her MFA from the University of Hartford’s Limited Photography Residency in 2021. Using mediums that include photography, collage, and AI, Murphy’s work is both personal and universal, exploring topics of nostalgia, femininity, and identity as they relate to the Internet, social media, and technology. She draws from her personal experiences with self-portraiture and popular culture, creating art that references meme humor and the effect changing technology has on collective and individual memory.
Her work has been shown in exhibitions in Berlin, New York, London, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. Murphy has released her work as NFTs through QuantumArt, EXPANDED.ART, objkt.one, and Tender on Verse. Her work has been featured in Monopol, Der Greif, and EXPANDED.ART magazine, and she has photographed for The New York Times.
Leah Schrager
Instagram has influenced Leah Schrager's artistic practice, merging photography and performance art through projects like Naked Therapy and her signature series, Infinity Selfie, which allows her to share nude images by repeating them. Despite gaining around 3 million followers, she found that her success on Instagram hindered attention for her music projects, particularly due to a predominantly male audience. This led her to collaborate on a female-friendly project called Man Hands, which explored celebrity culture over two years.
“A woman’s image needs to go through the hands of a man to be respected as art. If the woman is deemed attractive, her work is often dismissed as too commercial. If a woman is seen as using that attractiveness in the wrong way, then the commercial world won’t have her! So, it’s a strange in-between, and selfie feminism is the primary space where this tension is being explored.”
addie wagenknecht, your perfect women
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