New Exhibition Exploring Life Beyond the Human Currently Open in Valletta
Avatars, Monsters, {Robots}, Ghosts is open until Friday 14 August at Valletta Contemporary.
What does it mean to be human when avatars, robots, and ghosts increasingly share our world? This July at Valletta Contemporary, Letta Shtohryn, a Ukrainian artist and researcher, poses the question with Avatars, Monsters, {Robots}, Ghosts in a solo exhibition of her recent works.
It looks at four familiar figures, the avatar, the monster, the robot, and the ghost, and asks what they can tell us about identity in a digital age. Each one represents a kind of presence that doesn’t fit neatly into traditional ideas of what it means to be a person: not quite human, not quite machine, not quite real, not quite fiction.
The works on show respond to a world shaped by war, rapid technological change, and ecological crisis, conditions that have made our sense of identity feel less fixed and more fluid than ever before. Visitors will encounter floor-cleaning robots reimagined as participants in ritual, local legends retold through the quirks and limitations of AI chatbots, and quiet shrines built around the blind spots of machine vision. Throughout, Shtohryn also turns her attention to the tools themselves, the cameras, algorithms, and game engines that shape how we see and remember each other.
Together, the works trace the blurred lines between body and data, self and machine, and the single, fixed identity we once took for granted, now multiplied and extended across digital space.
Shtohryn works across XR, CGI, machinima, video, generative AI, and game development, blending speculative storytelling with new technologies to explore how our physical and digital lives have become intertwined. Her project Чули? Чули / Chuly? Chuly (2024) received an Honorary Mention in New Animation Art at Prix Ars Electronica 2024. Recent residencies include the MoCap Streamer Residency at Goldsmiths, University of London (2022) and Realities in Transition at iMAL, Brussels (2024), with a further selection in 2026 for the Astronomy Residency with KIKK Festival, TRAKK, Le Delta, Le Pavillon, and UNamur Astronomical Observatory in Namur, Belgium.
Since 2021, Shtohryn has been pursuing a PhD in Media Art, with her research being hosted at the Department of Transmedia Arts, University of Applied Arts Vienna during the summer semester of 2025. Her work has been shown internationally, including at Centre Pompidou, Frieze Art Fair New York, Ars Electronica Festival, and MUŻA in Malta, among many others.
An artist-led exhibition tour with Letta Shtohryn will take place on Wednesday 22 July, from 5:00–6:30pm, offering visitors the opportunity to explore the ideas, research, and technologies behind this exhibition.
Entrance is free.
For more information visit the website here!
