Refik Anadol Studio Presents
DATALAND
THE MUSEUM OF AI ARTS
Where human imagination meets the creative potential of machines
DATALAND Announces Inaugural Cohort of AI Artist Residents in Partnership with Google Arts & Culture
Four artists selected from over 500 applicants will develop new work with Refik Anadol Studio, DATALAND’s Large Nature Model, and Google’s cloud-based creative tools
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 | DATALAND, the world’s first Museum of AI Arts, co-founded by Refik Anadol, Artistic Director, and Efsun Erkılıç, Chief Strategy Officer, today announced the four artists selected for the inaugural cohort of the DATALAND AI Artist Residency, presented in partnership with Google Arts & Culture. Chosen from a competitive pool of more than five hundred applicants spanning disciplines from visual art and architecture to performance and creative technology, the selected residents represent an exceptional range of artistic vision and a shared commitment to the possibilities of human-machine collaboration.
The four residents of the inaugural cohort are: - Maya Man is a New York-based artist whose work examines contemporary identity culture on the internet.
- Lucia Rebolino is an artist, architect, and research-based computational designer who weaves science and art into digital aesthetics.
- Penny Slinger is a Los Angeles-based artist who has pioneered explorations of feminism, eroticism, and mysticism for over fifty years.
- Jess Starns is an inclusive arts practitioner with a focus on history and disability.
Over the course of six months, each resident will develop a new body of work in close collaboration with Refik Anadol Studio, with access to DATALAND’s advanced computing infrastructure; the Large Nature Model (LNM), the world’s first open-access, multi-modal generative AI model built solely on nature data sourced from the world’s leading scientific institutions; and cloud-based tools supported through the partnership with Google. Each resident will receive $25,000 in project support, dedicated mentorship from Studio members, and personalized sessions with Refik Anadol. The residency runs from June through December 2026, culminating in a public showcase at DATALAND in Los Angeles opening in December 2026.
“One of the dreams behind DATALAND has always been to create more than a museum. We envision it as a living platform where artists, researchers, scientists, and technologists come together to explore AI as a new cultural medium. This residency reflects that vision by creating space for experimentation, interdisciplinary dialogue, and bold artistic inquiry. I hope it becomes a place where artists discover new ways of imagining the future while asking questions that technology alone cannot answer,” stated Refik Anadol, Artistic Director and co-founder of DATALAND.
“The residency is designed to give artists both the freedom to experiment and the support of a thoughtful community. Throughout the selection process, it was inspiring to see such diverse perspectives on AI, and our conversations with the jury reflected the richness of this emerging field. Together with Google Arts & Culture, we wanted to create an environment where responsible innovation could flourish. We hope the relationships formed through this program continue well beyond the residency itself,” said Efsun Erkılıç, Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder of DATALAND.
“It has been a privilege to collaborate with Refik Anadol over the past decade, exploring the frontiers of art and technology together. We are incredibly excited to continue this journey by partnering with DATALAND for its inaugural AI Artist Residency. At Google Arts & Culture, our mission has always been to bring today’s technology to today’s creative endeavors. I look forward to seeing how this talented cohort of artists will shape the future of tech and discover new ways of storytelling,” said Amit Sood, Vice President and Founder, Google Arts & Culture.
The selection was made by a distinguished jury of practitioners, academics, and technology leaders:- Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, and founding Director of Research and Development, Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA)
- Nora Khan, Writer, Critic, and Curator
- Gabriel Kozlowski, Architect, Curator, and Research Associate, MIT School of Architecture and Planning; Founding Partner of POLES – Political Ecology of Space
- Mira Lane, Vice President, Technology & Society, Google
- Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London
- Freya Salway, Head of the Lab, Google Arts & Culture
- Amit Sood, Vice President and Founder of Google Arts & Culture
Applications were evaluated across two stages: an initial review by DATALAND and Refik Anadol Studio leadership, followed by jury deliberation among the finalists. The jury assessed proposals for artistic vision, conceptual rigor, and the potential to open new territory at the intersection of AI and creative practice.
The DATALAND AI Artist Residency will culminate in a public showcase featuring immersive installations, artist talks, and conversations on the evolving role of AI in culture. The showcase will be on view from December 2026 into early 2027. Further programming details will be announced in the coming months.
About the Residents |
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 | | Maya Man, Photo: Nayquan Shuler |
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| Maya Man is a New York-based artist whose work examines contemporary identity culture on the internet. Working across software, performance, installation, and video, she analyzes the presentation of femininity, authenticity, and selfhood online. In recent work, she has translated her browser-based projects into physical installations and live performances, expanding her practice beyond the screen. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; bitforms, New York; the Museum of Fashion, Antwerp; SOOT, Tokyo; HEK, Basel; and the online platform Feral File. She has presented performances and talks with Triple Canopy, New York; The New Museum, New York; Tate Britain and the V&A, London; and MOCA, Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in publications including Art in America, Document, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and CURA. She also organizes HEART, a curatorial project previously run out of her studio in SoHo. |
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 | | Lucia Rebolino, Photo: Chiara Rebolino |
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Lucia Rebolino is an artist, architect, and research-based computational designer, weaving science and art into digital aesthetics. Through this hybrid approach, she draws attention to complex and invisible systems, investigating how computational technologies mediate the production of knowledge. Trained between architecture and computer science at Columbia University GSAPP in New York, since 2023 she is a researcher at Forensic Architecture in London, where she produces visual evidence using cutting-edge technologies for human rights and environmental justice cases. She is also an artist-in-residence at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, where she develops performative web environments that bridge scientific research, internet infrastructure, and art institutions. Lucia is a fellow at TBA21 in Madrid, where she explores climate imaginaries and politics through artistic research in collaboration with the Basque Centre for Climate Change. Her work on prediction and climate models has been featured in e-flux and exhibited at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2025 and at the Busan Museum of Art in 2026. Her practice explores technology-driven screen performances, and she has lectured at institutions including Medialab Matadero, Columbia University, MoMA, the Royal College of Art, and ETH Zurich, among others.
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 | | Penny Slinger, Photo: Bil Brown |
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Penny Slinger is a Los Angeles-based artist who has been pioneering and exploring feminism, eroticism, and mysticism in her art for over fifty years. Her early work was inspired by Surrealism, and she decided to be her own muse. She went on to study and incorporate Tantra into her life and work. She has published a number of books and continues to work in many mediums, including collage, photography, drawing, sculpture/assemblage, performance arts, and video. Her work focuses on the liberation of the feminine, with a particular interest in oracles; her first oracle, The Secret Dakini Oracle, was published in 1977. A film titled Penny Slinger: Out of the Shadows, about her early life and work, was released in 2017. She is currently working on her archives/legacy project, fashioning new ways to leave an indelible imprint and incorporating the tools now available to us. Her work is exhibited in galleries and museums around the world and is in many prominent collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate, Great Britain. She is represented by Richard Saltoun Gallery, UK.
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 | | Jess Starns, Photo: Michael Akuagwu |
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Jess Starns is an inclusive arts practitioner with a focus on history and disability. Her creative process is collaborative and participatory, using methods that support a mutually beneficial two-way exchange. Her work is multidisciplinary, with materials and approach informed by archival research into the theme of the project. She is interested in finding new accessible tools to create art and utilizes a multidisciplinary approach informed by archival and museum research. She is neurodivergent and, due to her dexterity, is always looking for new, innovative ways to create art that is accessible to herself and others. She received her MA in Inclusive Arts Practice at the University of Brighton. As Adobe Creative Resident for inclusive design at the V&A museum, she combined inclusive arts practice and occupational therapy to shape her design process. She created a supported design studio called “That’s Effort!” in which young people experiencing emotional-based school avoidance, youth workers, and museum staff designed an inclusive water bottle and worked with an occupational therapist to design an accessible cookbook.
About the Jury |
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 | | Paola Antonelli, Photo: Peter Ross / © 2021 The Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| Paola Antonelli is Senior Curator of Architecture & Design at The Museum of Modern Art, as well as MoMA’s founding Director of Research & Development. Her work considers various design practices within a multidisciplinary framework, highlighting its connections with technology, society, art, and the environment. Besides curating exhibitions, she also produces a renowned public series, the MoMA R&D Salons, that demonstrates the potential of museums as R&D departments for society. The Instagram platform, book, and podcast Design Emergency, which she co-founded with design critic Alice Rawsthorn, is an ongoing investigation on design’s power to envision a better future for all. |
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 | | Nora N. Khan, Photo: Alexa Viscius |
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Nora N. Khan is an independent critic, essayist, curator, and educator. She is a member of the Curatorial Ensemble of the 2026 edition of Counterpublic, one of the nation’s largest public civic exhibitions, titled Coyote Time. She was Co-Curator with Andrea Bellini of the Biennale de L’Image en Mouvement 2024, A Cosmic Movie Camera, hosted by Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève. As curator of Manual Override at The Shed (2020), she worked with Sondra Perry, Morehshin Allahyari, and Lynn Hershman Leeson on new commissions, in an exhibition that featured major works by Simon Fujiwara and Martine Syms. She is currently Faculty in Creative Technologies at UCSC, and has served as Arts Council Professor at UCLA in Design Media Arts, History and Theory faculty at SCI-Arc, and professor in Digital + Media at Rhode Island School of Design, where she was nominated for the John R. Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her books are AI Art and the Stakes for Art Criticism (2026), Seeing, Naming, Knowing (2019), and Fear Indexing the X-Files (2017), with Steven Warwick.
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 | | Gabriel Kozlowski, Photo courtesy of Gabriel Kozlowski |
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Gabriel Kozlowski is the founding partner of POLES – Political Ecology of Space, an architecture and research studio operating between Rio de Janeiro and Boston, focused on the spatial politics of territory, landscape, and environmental transformation. He has contributed to the curatorial development of major international exhibitions, including as Head of Design and Construction for the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale Intelligens. Natural, Artificial, Collective; Assistant Curator of the 2021 Biennale How Will We Live Together?; Co-curator of the Brazilian Pavilion at the 2018 Biennale Freespace; and Design Curator of Housing+ at the MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism. His publications include Tomorrow Anew (Gryphus, 2023), The World as an Architectural Project (MIT Press, 2020), 8 Reactions for Afterwards (RioBooks, 2019), and Walls of Air (Bienal de São Paulo, 2018). At MIT, he held teaching and research positions across the School of Architecture and Planning, the Center for Advanced Urbanism, and the SENSEable City Lab. Gabriel leads ForestGens, a critical cartographic initiative mapping the spatial imprint of human activity across ancient and contemporary Amazonia.
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 | | Mira Lane, Photo courtesy of Mira Lane |
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| Mira Lane is Vice President of Technology & Society and Founder of the Envisioning Studio at Google, a multidisciplinary prototyping lab that brings together technologists, artists, filmmakers, researchers, and strategists to explore new possibilities for emerging technologies. Her team explores how AI can expand creative expression, reshape storytelling, and unlock new forms of human-machine collaboration. Prior to Google, Mira was Partner and founder of Ethics & Society at Microsoft. She holds numerous patents spanning platforms and collaborative interfaces. Mira is also a practicing artist whose work ranges from ceramics and printmaking to experimental film and poetry. |
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 | | Hans Ulrich Obrist, Photo: Elias Hassos |
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| Hans Ulrich Obrist is Artistic Director of Serpentine in London, and Senior Advisor at LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show World Soup (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he has curated more than 400 shows. Obrist’s publications include Ways of Curating (2015), The Age of Earthquakes (2015), Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects (2015), The Extreme Self: Age of You (2021), 140 Ideas for Planet Earth (2021), Édouard Glissant: Archipelago (2021), Remember to Dream (2023), Wish You Were Here (2025), and Life in Progress (2026). |
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 | | Freya Salway, Photo courtesy of Freya Salway |
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Freya Salway is the Head of the Lab at Google Arts & Culture, collaborating with artists, technologists, curators, scientists, and cultural institutions globally to explore the application of advanced technologies for arts and culture. Since 2018, she has supported artists’ experimentation with AI through residency programs and bespoke collaborations, partnering with renowned artists, innovators, and cultural organisations. Freya has also worked as an independent consultant, enabling artists, brands, and broadcasters to deliver creative projects, and led arts partnerships for Sky Arts, the UK’s only TV channel dedicated to the arts.
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 | | Amit Sood, Photo courtesy of Amit Sood |
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Amit Sood leads Google’s effort to make culture accessible to everyone. While working with Google’s Android team, Amit’s love for art inspired him to devise a project that could bring museum collections online for everyone to enjoy, for free. That project was released to the world in 2011. Today Amit’s team is an innovation partner for cultural institutions. Google Arts & Culture offers technologies that help preserve and share culture, and help curators create engaging exhibitions both online and inside museums. Google Arts & Culture puts more than 3,000 museums at people’s fingertips for free, on the web, on iOS, and on Android. Some of the team’s latest projects include a tool that finds your pet’s lookalike in art, a selection of fun cultural games, artworks that bring climate data to life, and a hub that celebrates Gustav Klimt’s legacy. Before joining Google, Amit Sood worked for Ericsson, DHL, and non-profit organizations in Europe and India. He holds an MBA from INSEAD and a graduate degree in commerce from Sydenham College in Mumbai.
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About DATALAND
DATALAND is the world’s first Museum of AI Arts and digital ecosystem where human imagination meets the creative potential of machines. DATALAND’s flagship Los Angeles location has five galleries across 25,000 square feet of public space, with an additional 10,000 square feet that houses the museum’s advanced technologies. Situated at Frank Gehry’s The Grand LA, DATALAND unites pioneers across multidisciplinary fields including the arts, science, and technology under the artistic leadership of Refik Anadol Studio. Its inaugural exhibition, Machine Dreams: Rainforest, opened to the public on June 20, 2026, and will be on view through January 31, 2027. DATALAND joins the renowned visual and performing arts institutions in the city’s Grand Avenue Cultural District including The Broad, LA Phil, MOCA, The Music Center, REDCAT, and The Colburn School. DATALAND’s mission includes serving as a public repository for large-scale nature-focused data sets, providing online access and learning platforms, and collecting and exhibiting artworks by digital and AI artists. In October 2025, DATALAND established an artist residency program in partnership with Google Arts & Culture to support creatives working with machine intelligence. Aspiring to set the standard for the presentation, curation, and exploration of AI Arts, DATALAND embodies a new model for cultural institutions in the 21st century.
Website: www.dataland.art; Socials: @datalandmuseum
About Google Arts & Culture
Google Arts & Culture provides an online platform and app that brings the narratives and collections of more than 3,000 cultural organizations across 90+ countries to a global audience. Since 2011, the team has served as an innovation partner for the arts & culture sector. Through its Lab, collaborations with creative coders, artists, and institutions experiment with advanced technologies, explore new areas of creative practice, protect cultural heritage, and engage audiences in art and technology.
About Refik Anadol Studio
Established in 2014 by Refik Anadol, a pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence, and artist and entrepreneur Efsun Erkılıç, the Los Angeles-based Refik Anadol Studio produces enthralling and immersive media art intended for anyone, any age, and any background. The award-winning studio has been engaged by leading tech companies, groundbreaking researchers, and cutting-edge thought leaders to produce projects that have been shown in more than 80 cities spanning six continents, and experienced by millions of ardent fans. In taking the data that flows around us as the primary material and the neural network of a computerized mind as a collaborator, Anadol and his team paint with a thinking brush, offering us radical visualizations of our collective memories and expanding the possibilities of interdisciplinary arts. Refik Anadol Studio comprises artists, architects, data scientists, engineers, and researchers from diverse professional and personal backgrounds, embracing principles of inclusion and equity throughout every stage of production. www.refikanadolstudio.com
About Refik Anadol
Refik Anadol (b. 1985, Istanbul, Turkey) is an internationally renowned media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. He is the Director and co-founder of Refik Anadol Studio in Los Angeles, the Artistic Director and co-founder of DATALAND, and teaches at UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts. Anadol’s site-specific data paintings and sculptures, live audio/visual performances, and immersive installations take many forms, while encouraging us to rethink our engagement with the physical world, public art, decentralized networks, and the creative potential of artificial intelligence. Anadol’s work has been exhibited at venues including MoMA, Guggenheim Bilbao, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Serpentine Galleries, National Gallery of Victoria, Venice Architecture Biennale, Hammer Museum, Arken Museum, Casa Batlló, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Daejeon Museum of Art, and Istanbul Modern. www.refikanadol.com
About Efsun Erkılıç
Efsun Erkılıç (b. 1982, Istanbul, Turkey) is a visionary artist, producer, cultural researcher, and co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of DATALAND, and co-founder of Refik Anadol Studio. With a career spanning over a decade, Erkılıç has been the Executive Producer of multidisciplinary artworks at more than 80 venues worldwide, ensuring the seamless blend of human-machine collaborations and high-quality execution in every step of the Studio’s interdisciplinary projects. Erkılıç is also an established painter. Her work captures an eclectic spectrum of colors and shapes, chronicling her myriad mystical, inner, and physical odysseys. Beyond her visual art, Erkılıç crafts performance pieces that meld bodily expression with philosophical insights into the human condition. She holds a BA and MA in Visual Communication Design from Bilgi University, Istanbul.
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