OSLO – Frieda Toranzo Jaeger: Surface Intelligence

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger employs painting as a tool for collective, critical liberation from binary thinking and systems of power. At the center of Toranzo Jaeger’s exhibition at Den Frie is a suspended work composed of interlinked panels, making it at once a painting, a sculpture, and a stage. Painted on both sides, the work reflects on the interconnections between capitalism, technology, and visions of the future.

Toranzo Jaeger depicts metaphors of humanity’s ambition to master nature and conquer the universe through science. Her works examine the friction between humans and machines, rationality and desire, a tension heightened today by social media and artificial intelligence. What happens when our autonomy is absorbed by technology and returns to us in an alienated form? By deconstructing techno-utopian dreams, the paintings unfold alternative visions of the future, carried by queer desire and freed from the shadows of colonialism.

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger (b. 1988) lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico. She studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg.