Until september 28, 2025

Sentinels and Bubbles: an Infonaut Sanctuary

Melissa Flaum

 

Amid tangled cables, silicon quartz, circuit boards, keyboards, and other techno-debris, a space emerges for connection and meditation with the Internet. This intervention for The Cabinet, by Melissa Flaum (Mexico City, 1995), evokes fragments of glitches bridging humanity, spirituality, and technology. The project delves into contemporary ontological needs, examining collective faith in data, numerical processes, and phenomena beyond human comprehension—elements we rarely question in our daily lives.

 

We often believe we navigate freely through the vast expanse of the digital world. However, firewalls -acting as sentinels- and filter bubbles silently regulate the flow of information through personalized algorithms. From the Library of Alexandria to the Whole Earth Catalogue and finally to the modern web, humanity has long aspired to collect and preserve all the world's knowledge. Yet, the utopian ideals that shaped the early Internet of the 80s and 90s are becoming increasingly unsustainable. Melissa Flaum's sanctuary challenges the consumption of contemporary information and questions the supposed democratic nature of the Internet. Day by day, algorithmic bubbles filter content, tailoring it to align with users' desires, interests, and tolerances. While this may appear to foster personalization, it ultimately implants a singular way of thinking. So, where is the supposed diversity of knowledge?

 

As if we were sentinels guarding the flow of information, within these bubbles, we catch only fleeting glimpses of a computer's ever-evolving materiality -one from which we cannot completely escape. Melissa Flaum refrains from endorsing a technological Manichaeism; instead, she highlights the Internet as a network brimming with multifaceted edges and intricate complexities. It is not merely a tool designed to automate the world but also an entity that bewitches and protects us. This duality gives rise to blind faith, a magical ambivalence that reminds us how spiritual impulses can thrive in the most unexpected realms.

 

 

 

Karol Wolley Reyes

 

 

From april 26, 2025

 

Melissa Flaum (Ciudad de México, 1995)

 

Artista visual cuya práctica se centra en el arte digital y el videomapping. En 2020 ingresó a la Licenciatura en Artes Visuales en la Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda" del INBAL, consolidando su formación artística. Previamente, cursó la Licenciatura en Artes Visuales en la FAD UNAM, donde participó en el Seminario de Live Cinema, y en 2017 acreditó cursos y un diplomado de especialización en arte digital y videomapping.

 

Ha participado en numerosas exposiciones colectivas y, en noviembre de 2024, presentó su primera exposición individual "Divinum Nexus" en la Galería Red de Arte Mexicana. Su obra ha sido presentada en diversos festivales y recintos, incluyendo el Foro IndieRocks, Foro Wateke, Festival Hello World!, Sonografx GIIP ImagoPostAural, CC El Rule, Faro Cosmos, Faro Aragón, Galería RAB 63 y Aguafuerte Galería.

 

Además, ha colaborado en proyectos de Cultura Comunitaria de la Secretaría de Cultura de la CDMX, ampliando su impacto en contextos artísticos y sociales. Actualmente vive y trabaja en la Ciudad de México.