ROTTERDAM.- Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen presents Pixel Pioneers, an exhibition dedicated to digital art. In a world where life without technology is now almost unimaginable, the presentation spans a range of works, from algorithmically generated paintings and audiovisual installations to interactive retro-games. Alongside newly commissioned works, Pixel Pioneers also draws on the museum’s collection, including key examples from the 1960s that foreground early experiments with digital tools. Moving between past and present, the exhibition considers how artists have used technology to bring to life the stories of their time.

The exhibition highlights the introduction of digital tools and artificial intelligence into the creative process. Christopher Kulendran Thomas draws on his Tamil background in works which metabolize Sri Lanka's layered histories and contested visual legacies, raising questions about authorship and the power of images to shape what is remembered. His monumental AI-assisted paintings are based on digital images generated by computer programs trained on the work of renowned Sri Lankan artists influenced by the Western art historical canon.

Videogames by pioneers such as Feng Mengbo (b.1966, China) demonstrate how gameplay, visual language, and interaction can be used to make social and political statements. His seminal piece Long March: Restart reimagines a significant period in Chinese history as a playable videogame in a retro gaming style, presented as a 17-metre-long interactive projection. The title references the Long March of 1934–5, the arduous military retreat of Mao Zedong's Red Army that was later transformed into a foundational myth of Communist China. Feng equates the epic heroics of revolutionary martyrs with the repetitive antics of pixelated video game characters, satirically deflating the grand narratives of history.

In The Gaming Room, Larry Achiampong (b. 1984, UK) approaches videogames as lived cultural experience. Drawing on his personal archive spanning four decades—from early 8-bit and 16-bit consoles to immersive 3D environments—the installation brings together consoles, books, music, film, and memorabilia to foreground gaming as a formative space of imagination, learning, and social exchange. Growing up in 1980s and 1990s London, Achiampong encountered games as sites of experimentation and resilience, where failure, repetition, and progression shaped ideas of agency and survival. Designed as a communal, domestic setting, The Gaming Room positions gaming as a complex cultural form that carries histories, soundscapes, and diasporic aesthetics.

Pixel Pioneers also showcases artists who leverage digital media to challenge dominant structures. Claudia Hart (b. 1955, United States) regards digital objects as cultural heritage. In her new commission for the show, Empire Failure addresses big tech by incorporating logos of major technology companies and equating them with historical empires, while wall paintings chart the rise and fall of failed cryptocurrencies and corporate entities. Suzanne Treister (b. 1958, United Kingdom) presents works from HEXEN 2.0 (2009–11) and HEXEN 5.0 (2023–25), her series of tarot cards recounting histories of countercultures, the internet, ecology, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. Intended as tools to envision positive alternative futures, these works reveal the hidden worlds behind everyday technologies.

The exhibition also includes a key digital artwork from the museum's collection: Horizons (2008) by Geert Mul (b.1965, the Netherlands). Restored specifically for this show, the work was first commissioned nearly twenty years ago and examines the intersection of museum collections and digital databases. Mul selected works from the collection featuring horizons and projected them onto a large screen, with sensors tracking visitors' movements to generate an ever-changing panoramic landscape.

Since the late twentieth century, the museum has collected film, video and electronics-based works. Featuring works from the museum’s collection by Hoos Blotkamp (1943–2014, Netherlands), Nam June Paik (1932–2006, South Korea), Peter Struycken (b. 1939, Netherlands), as well as Jeroen Jongeleen (b. 1967, Netherlands) this exhibition highlights these works as part of a broader landscape that has defined digital art – genre that continues to evolve since it first emerged in the 1960s – bringing these histories into dialogue with contemporary practices. 

Pixel Pioneers is curated by Amira Gad.