Launched in 2020 by the Onassis Basis and NEW INC, the incubator of the New Museum, Onassis ONX Studio has advanced into certainly one of New York’s main hubs for artists working on the intersection of prolonged actuality (X.R.), A.I. and efficiency. Intently related to Onassis Stegi in Athens, the 2 organizations kind a dynamic worldwide channel for inventive alternate inside the broader Onassis Basis ecosystem. In New York, Onassis ONX supplies an accessible acceleration area for bold productions, whereas at Onassis Stegi—based in 2010—the main focus is on schooling {and professional} growth, nurturing a quickly increasing arts-and-technology scene. Rooted in Greece’s lengthy custom of theater and dramaturgy, this has impressed compelling intersections of theater, dance and know-how.
To mark its fifth anniversary, Onassis ONX has introduced its relocation from its authentic venue within the Olympic Tower on Fifth Avenue, simply above the Onassis Basis’s U.S. headquarters, to an expanded 6,000-square-foot area within the coronary heart of Tribeca at 390 Broadway, which additionally homes PPOW and Matthew Brown Gallery. Set to open in January, the brand new facility will proceed to function as a hybrid residency, analysis lab and manufacturing studio, providing further area for exhibitions and public programming that reach the attain of the work developed inside the group.
The brand new studio features a motion-capture stage twice the dimensions of the earlier one, a three-wall seamless projection room designed for museum-scale installations and an expanded sound studio—4 instances bigger than the unique—geared up with a high-fidelity system for immersive sonic environments. It additionally options enhanced computational infrastructure, together with a brand new server array designed to assist A.I. and generative media.
“It’s been superb to see how a lot curiosity, focus and assist for artwork and know-how has expanded in New York Metropolis and world wide,” Jazia Hammoudi, program director of Onassis ONX, instructed Observer forward of the announcement. “It’s been an extended journey for many people, however witnessing this evolution now feels extremely rewarding.”
Created as an arm of Onassis Tradition—the cultural department of Greece’s main philanthropic group, which has championed “help, progress and growth” since 1975—ONX shortly grew to become central to the muse’s mission as a cultural innovator and supporter of latest artwork. From the outset, the muse has operated from a deeply humanist perspective, Hammoudi defined. “It’s a company that takes its lead from artists somewhat than dictating from the highest down, frequently trying to perceive what’s really occurring throughout the cultural and mental panorama. It’s about paying shut consideration to what artists and audiences are fascinated by, fascinated by and in want of. That very same responsiveness to creative and technological innovation is what impressed the muse’s growth in each New York and Athens.”
At its core, ONX is at first an accelerator. Its basis lies within the manufacturing area, instruments and technical session it supplies—however past that, it features as an aesthetic and mental incubator. “We provide in depth inventive session and curatorial assist to artists, so that they’re not solely producing work right here but additionally creating its conceptual and public trajectory,” Hammoudi added. “An artist can come to ONX, construct their work and we’ll assist them discover the best platform for it—whether or not that’s a pageant, an exhibition inside our personal applications in New York or Athens, or by certainly one of our accomplice establishments.” Onassis ONX additionally helps artists safe further funding, both by inner seed grants and commissions or by its world community of companions.
Since its founding, ONX has supported a powerful roster of artists and collectives redefining the intersection of efficiency and know-how, together with LaJuné McMillian, Peter Burr, Stephanie Dinkins, Sutu (Stuart Campbell) and Jayson Musson. Tasks developed at ONX usually blur the boundaries between theater, gaming environments, set up and dwell efficiency—echoing the Onassis Basis’s broader mission to discover the way forward for tradition and human expertise by know-how.
“Our purpose is to supply holistic assist for artists working in new media as a result of we acknowledge that many conventional museums and cultural establishments weren’t designed to fulfill their wants,” Hammoudi mentioned. “Our work is twofold: to supply artists with the assets and infrastructure they want and to assist establishments evolve into what Twenty first-century creativity really appears like.”
ONX presently helps about 85 member artists worldwide who’ve full entry to manufacturing services, seed grants, funding alternatives, inner open calls and ongoing employees session. This membership mannequin ensures long-term, sustained assist for artists working in new media. “We all know that this type of work takes time—and sometimes requires many alternative minds and sorts of intelligence to deliver to completion,” Hammoudi defined. “As advocates and discipline builders, we see these ongoing relationships with artists as important to the expansion and vitality of the sector itself.”
The brand new area will even allow the group to deepen and broaden its world partnerships. As a part of its mission as a discipline builder, Onassis ONX collaborates with worldwide companions to develop residencies, alternate applications, fellowships, exhibitions, funding initiatives and distribution channels.
For instance, Onassis ONX is a accomplice on Lincoln Middle’s Collider Fellowship, runs a residency alternate with MIT’s Open Documentary Lab and maintains a core partnership with NEW INC, the place artists monitor work inside the ONX area. Trying forward, Hammoudi mentioned the purpose is to proceed increasing these partnerships to assist a rising cohort of artists. “It’s vital for us to take care of a deep, ongoing reference to our 85 member artists whereas additionally creating methods to supply short-term, project-based assist to those that come to us with a selected problem or want. This growth permits us to do each.”
Notions of hybrid identification past organic, mythological and digital limits
Inaugurating Onassis ONX’s new area can be “TECHNE: Homecoming,” an exhibition uniting six visionary artists whose multimedia installations discover hybrid identification formed by organic, mythological and digital kinships. “The present displays our perception that know-how can deepen the methods we join—with each other, with our histories and with the tales we select to inform in regards to the future,” Hammoudi mentioned.
The artist lineup embodies the form of interdisciplinary, cross-knowledge collaboration the muse has lengthy supported, that includes works that vary from Andrew Thomas Huang’s two-channel video set up and sculptural surroundings—rooted in a Buddhist folktale and knowledgeable by his collaborations with Björk and FKA Twigs—to Tamiko Thiel’s Atmos Sphaerae, a video set up tracing Earth’s atmospheric evolution from primordial void to Anthropocene by a poetic translation of molecular information into visible kind that collapses standard timescales. In the meantime, Damara Inglês’s “phygital” set up reimagines the afterlife of Queen Nzinga of Angola by the lens of Cyber-Kimbandism, merging Bantu cosmology, A.I. and 3D design to place know-how as each a religious conduit for ancestral connection and a device of anti-colonial resistance.
In an identical spirit, Natalia Manta’s looping animations, digital tombs and hybrid sculptures oscillate between the archaeological and the alien, frightening transhistorical reflections on human time throughout geographies and collective reminiscence. Sister Sylvester presents Consuming Brecht, an experimental work of automated theater and performance-as-installation that features as a Marxist-feminist laboratory. Lastly, Miriam Simun’s generative three-channel projection Contact Zone Stage 2 brings the Swiss Alps into collision with the artist’s personal intestines beneath an A.I.’s gaze, repeatedly reconfiguring to discover the symbiosis between natural and synthetic life—a visionary intersection of nature, know-how and consciousness past human notion. “Know-how turns into the mediator for this imagining, permitting a hybrid being—a brand new chimera—to emerge between nature and self. It’s a wild and deeply thought-provoking work,” Hammoudi mentioned.
In every case, know-how permits artists to assemble extra expansive worlds round their follow, extending the attain of their our bodies and presence whereas dissolving the normal style boundaries that when outlined art-making. “These outdated taxonomies—this artist does that, that one does this—have gotten virtually irrelevant,” Hammoudi famous, emphasizing that many of those works use digital instruments not as spectacle however as devices for increasing how we sense, understand and expertise actuality—or transfer past its human limits.
The exhibition can be a part of the annual Underneath the Radar Competition, which this yr consists of two Onassis ONX performances—We Have No Want of Different Worlds (We Want Mirrors) by Graham Sack and ¡Harken! by Modesto Flako Jimenez—in addition to MAMI, a mainstage manufacturing conceived and directed by Mario Banushi and commissioned by Onassis Stegi. Collectively, these works underscore the muse’s multifaceted assist for artists working on the intersection of efficiency and new know-how—an ever-expanding discipline as creators more and more experiment with digital embodiment, exploring efficiency, the shifting boundaries between analog and digital and what it means for the physique to exist in actual time and area inside up to date digital tradition.
Balancing studio manufacturing and public programming
Trying forward, Onassis ONX will proceed to stability its mission of offering a devoted workspace for artists with a rising dedication to public engagement. Starting in 2026, ONX will host two in-studio exhibitions every year—one in January and one other within the fall—together with quarterly public applications developed in collaboration with organizations akin to NEW INC, Pioneer Works, Rhizome and Lincoln Middle. The inspiration additionally plans to proceed its main annual off-site exhibition every June, following final yr’s presentation at Tribeca Immersive. “This mannequin permits us to maintain the studio primarily a growth area whereas sustaining a constant public presence by exhibitions and thought-leadership occasions introduced on our web site and publication,” Hammoudi mentioned.
In Athens, the main focus stays academic, with ongoing incubation applications akin to ONX Futures and the annual A.I. Summer season College every July. The Athens area will even current an ONX showcase in Could and contribute to the muse’s broader cultural calendar, which incorporates the Borderline Competition in April. The inspiration additionally produces Plásmata, its large-scale digital artwork biennial in Pedion tou Areos Park. Held each two years, it is without doubt one of the few out of doors digital artwork biennials on this planet, combining large-scale installations, performances and music with works by each Greek and worldwide artists, together with latest individuals akin to John Fitzgerald, Jiabao Li, William Kentridge and Johan Bourgeois.
In the end, ONX’s mission—throughout each New York and Athens—is to broaden the understanding of artwork and know-how not solely as mediums however as frameworks for inspecting how we dwell in the present day. As conventional genres proceed to dissolve, the muse stays dedicated to supporting artists working at these frontiers, the place artwork and life more and more intersect.
