Is the hole in the doughnut part of the doughnut? A bemusing question. At least at first. Because the longer you think about it, the more complex it becomes. Is the answer to be found in the philosophical, psychological, scientific, or mechanical? The humble doughnut, reinterpreted as an Aristotelian snack. Being in relationship with non-being? Doughnut as gooey event horizon, a quantum muse? Perhaps it’s the embodiment of Leonard Cohen’s cracks — the cracks where the light gets in? Does our approach to the question reveal anything about how we regard holes — as simple ‘lack, or as something altogether different, something essential for the whole? Do wholes need holes?
When The Wrong Biennale announced that the 7th edition was to ‘embrace a world transformed by AI’, the first order of business was to survey the breadth of work artists are making with, and about, AI. What immediately stood out was the propensity for using AI to fill in gaps and to mend tears — reconstructing family histories, regenerating memories, replacing lost objects (with ‘found’ non-objects), and even raising the dead. Undoubtedly, for many artists, lack is a powerful presence, and in cahoots with AI, these artists are deftly and convincingly navigating and negotiating absence.
For other artists, however, holes are primordial, like Chaos in Greek mythology — an abyssal fissure from which everything is possible. This generative space is to be mined for the ethereal: patterns and rhythms, the wave that ever so briefly coalesces into something solid. And poof, it’s gone. The whole and the hole are one and the same.
In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard (1964) writes, ‘For the great dreamers of corners and holes, nothing is ever empty. The dialectics of full and empty only correspond to two geometrical non-realities.’ And this brings us (ahem...) full circle, back to the question posed by the doughnut: Is the hole in the doughnut part of the doughnut?
From an open call for artists whose work explores holes and wholes in the age of AI, fourteen international artists have been selected to exhibit in this pavilion. In their work, these artists endeavour to fill holes, simulate holes, or deep-dive into them — all while considering the question raised at the very beginning.
Welcome to The Doughnut(W)Hole!
Kim Shaw, curator, 2025