PCAI is glad to announce that PCAI Collection artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Rindon Johnson participate in the exhibition Close to the Clouds: Encountering Digital Diasporas at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.
Curated by 2024–2025 Curator-in-Residence Kathy Cho, Close to the Clouds considers how the formation of collective identities takes place utilizing technology and the internet. Featuring work by Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Zainab Aliyu, Rindon Johnson, Lauren Lee McCarthy and Kyle McDonald, Rebeca Romero, and Tianyi Sun and Fiel Guhit, the exhibition offers a compelling snapshot of artistic practices at the intersection of migration, memory, and media.
Presented through interactive installations, immersive video works, and emerging technologies, the exhibition centers digital space as both archive and space for exploration — examining how dispersed communities connect through code, livestreams, and algorithmic intimacy.
The artists in Close to the Clouds use multiple approaches to expand the idea of “digital diasporas”—their works are invitations to oscillate between the physical and the digital, through durational mediums and a poetic interpretation of time.
Duration: January 16, 2026–May 3, 2026
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Image credit: Installation view of And yet my mask is powerful Part 1, 2016-18, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme. The song is the call and the land is calling © Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 2024. Photo by David Stjernholm. Courtesy of the artists.
Activity aligned with Goals 3, 4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17
