Shimmer: Dreaming the Posthuman

Shimmer: Dreaming the Posthuman is running at the Frist Art Museum through January 3, 2027, having opened on September 25. It's in the Ingram Gallery, and it's a big, wide-ranging show that brings together artists working with both analogue and emergent technologies—digital animation, augmented and virtual reality, motion capture, and generative software. The common thread is the relationship between humanity, other species, and the earth, and the exhibition pushes back on the humanist idea that humans are the center of the universe.

Chief Curator Mark Scala organized the show, and it's his last before retiring. He describes a "shimmer" running through the work: a transient glow that makes things appear immaterial and otherworldly, where extinct species virtually reappear and machines become entwined with amoeba, slime, and microbes. The whole thing is arranged in three sections. The first takes a biological and ecological look at extinction, evolution, and interspecies entanglement. The second is psychological, built on stories of metamorphosis. The third is ontological, bridging ancestral and contemporary belief systems that reach beyond modern Western traditions.

Scala draws on the surrealists' interest in the marvelous, the uncanny, and the unpredictable. The fluid creations morph, flicker, and dance like psychologically charged archetypes within a new collective unconscious. It's the kind of show that asks you to sit with the strange and the shifting rather than looking for a single, easy answer. If you've spent any time with the Frist's programming over the years, this feels like a fitting final act for Scala—a wide-reaching, curious exhibition that doesn't shy away from the weird. You can catch it in the Ingram Gallery now through January 3, 2027.