Focus On: Arvida Byström: Abyss

In Abyss, Arvida Byström continues her exploration of intimacy, digital desire, and identity, building on her acclaimed series In the Clouds. This project began with an experiment: she fed photography and imagery of herself through an AI-powered undressing website - a tool designed to generate fake nudes - and offered the results for sale with out disclaiming the process. In doing so, she examined not only the mechanisms of digital objectification but also the point at which these technologies create something more than human: strange distortions, surreal forms. In Abyss, these glitches become the core. Byström works with AI-generated imagery to create uncanny, hyper-feminine bodies. These forms become warped, stretched, fragmented, and transformed into abstract shapes. These visual manipulations critique how digital platforms shape - and often distort - the aesthetics of desire and the performance of identity.

 

At the heart of the exhibition is a sculptural installation modelled after the mutoscope, an early film-viewing device from the late 19th century, once also used to display soft-core pornography in private settings. Via a small opening, viewers can peer inside to find an AI-generated video, showing deformed, synthetic visions of an AI generated body.  In this way, the work explores ideas of openings and enclosures resonating with the exhibition's title Abyss, providing both a conduit to observation alongside an essential aspect of pleasure. Pornography, Byström suggests, is not just subject matter - it is infrastructure. Many mass market technologies were accelerated through the demand of pornography, such as the internet, 3G, camcorder and more. In Abyss, Byström invites viewers to explore if porn can be more than human and how desire is created through culture.

 

About the artist: 

Arvida Byström (b. 1991, Stockholm) is a visual artist and photographer working internationally. She studied Fine Art at the University of Gothenburg (HDK-Valand), where she began developing a multidisciplinary practice that combines photography, video, performance, and digital media. 
Through the medium of digital and electronic technologies, Arvida Byström (b. 1991, Stockholm) explores how digital culture shapes our understanding, and consumption, of identity, intimacy and desire. Her utilisation of hyper-feminine aesthetics and visual tropes explores social aesthetics and power dynamics across digital landscapes, highlighting the performance of the self in online settings. 

Previously based in London and Los Angeles, and now living and working in Paris, Byström travels in an aesthetic universe of disobedient bodies, fruits in lingerie, tulips and AI sex dolls. Her photography, performances and sculptures have been shown in various international institutions, including V&A London and Tate. Last year her work In The Clouds was featured as one of the most defining projects of the year by Art News.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITION: 2025: „Who’s Your Daddy?“, OK Linz, Linz, Austria; 2025: Arvida Byström, „Wink“, PLUS-ONE Projects; 2023: Weltgeist - curated by Bjorn Stern, Galerie Kandlhofer; 2018: Inflated Fiction, Fotografiska, Stockholm, Sweden; 2018: Cherry Picking, Gallery Kranjcar, Zagreb, Croatia; 2018: Chef Picking, Gallery Steinsland Berliner, Stockholm, Sweden; 2018: Frenemy, Absolut Art Bar, Stockholm, Sweden; 2014: Wifi or wife, Bon Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden;
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS: 2025: „Model Collapse“, Vienna Digital Cultures Festival, Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz, Vienna, Austria; 2023: „…And that’s only (half) the story“, PLUS-ONE Projects; 2021: Mixed Pickles 9, Ruttowski;68; 2020: A WOMEN’S RIGHT TO PLEASURE, BlackBook Presents; 2020: Me, Myself and I, BIP, Liege, BE; 2020: Better Off Online, Ars Electronica, Online & Linz, AT; 2020: No True Self, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, AU; 2019: The Family Show, Gallery Steinsland Berliner, Stockholm, SE; 2019: The Female Lens, Richard Taittinger Gallery, NY, US; 2019: Link in bio, Museum der bildenden Künste (MdbK), Leipzig, Germany; 2019: The Family Show, Steinsland Berliner, Stockholm, Sweden; 2019: Chart art fair, Charlottenburg, Copenhagen, Denmark; 2019: Bodyfictions(s), Musée national d’histoire et d’art, Luxembourg; 2019: Role Play, The Orange Garden Rome, Italy; 2018: Our Winter Show 2018, Steinsland Berliner, Stockholm, Sweden; 2018: Virtual Normality, Museum der bildenden Künste (MbdK), Leipzig, Germany; 2018: A Queen Within features fashion as art in a spectacular setting, New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), New Orleans, US; 2018: Pics or it didn't happen, Hasselt University, Hasselt, Belgium; 2017: Boudoir sulk, Oslo10, Basel, Switzerland; 2016: Photo Vogue Festival, BASE, Milano, Italy; 2016: ZERO ZERO, Anna Kultys Gallery, London, UK; 2016: Me, Myself and I, Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden, Germany; 2016: A tubular project ADIDAS, New Gallery, New York, US; 2016: What a time to be alive, Slow Culture, Los Angeles, US; 2016: Into you, ATM Galley, Austin, US; 2016: Future visions, Hunger Gallery, London, UK; 2015: Ego Update, NRW forum, Düsseldorf, Germany; 2014: There is a good girl, Saatchi & Saatchi, London, UK; 2014: LIKE, Q, Copenhagen, Denmark; 2014: LIKE, Four Boxes, Krabbesholm, Denmark; 2014: Pussy Pat, Muddguts, New York, US;