Exhibitions
"A fragile unfolding" at Arts + Literature Lab
On view January 22 - March 27, 2027
Meg Mitchell's A Fragile Unfolding is a digital environment embedded within a physical installation that partially mirrors it. Although utilizing game development software, Mitchell intentionally programmed a world that subverts the expectations of traditional video gaming: there are no goals, rewards, or points to earn, no killing, winning, or narrative progression. Instead, players are asked to navigate a landscape composed of floating islands of ice with a shifting ambient soundtrack and rotating satellites emitting beams of light. It is as poetically atmospheric as it is desolate and unforgiving. Movement through this space is cyclical, unstable, and perhaps even frustrating, as visitors are repeatedly displaced or redirected—producing an experience where personal agency is momentary, contingent, and never fully secured.
Certain aspects of the virtual realm are echoed in tangible objects. The jagged glacial islands of the archipelago, for example, appear as sculptures and also take the form of pin-and-string drawings on the wall. The logic of game programming — grids, hexagons, and the repetition of basic elements — is reflected in other parts of the gallery, such as the constellation of geometric stools, patterned ceramic tiles, and crocheted blankets. However, where the onscreen landscape can be bleak and unforgiving, the physical installation, with its textiles, tiles, shelving, and cushioned seating, introduces allusions to the domestic. These gestures toward comfort heighten the exhibition's tension, placing bodily ease alongside digital vexation.
By refusing the transactional nature of games and the immersive promise of cyber-escape, the exhibition redirects attention back to the viewer’s body in actual space and time. The digitally rendered landscape’s solemn beauty unfolds as a serene, atmospheric thought-space — one that encourages slowing down, sustained looking, and a heightened awareness of mood, sensation, and presence. The reverberations between the simulated and the real also invite critical thinking about how the mechanics and affective qualities of the game space (isolation,existential questioning,and illusions of progress that undermine one's autonomy), hint atbroader systems of power and control that shape everyday life.
Text by Leah Kolb