Our best machines are made of sunshine.

3. – 24. May, 2025
3. May, Opening reception

“Our best machines are made of sunshine” is an exhibition concept created by the Italian curator Vanina Saracino and developed and presented at Møre og Romsdal Kunstsenter in collaboration with MRK’s Artistic Director Jet Pascua. The project, which takes its title from Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”, is about energy and human existence. The participating artists are Kent Chan, Maryna Makarenko, Hugo de Almeida Pinho, Gjertrud Hals and the trio Antonia Baehr, Jule Flierl, and Isabell Spengler.

“We are energy. Our existence is driven by the metabolic absorption and consumption of vast amounts of energy, with the sun as the primary source.”

The sun contains both life-giving and destructive forces, mirroring the ambivalent relationship we have with it. Our best machines are made of sunshine is an artistic and critical exploration of the transition from fossil fuels to solar energy. The exhibition highlights that this shift is not only technological, political, or economic, but also cultural. Therefore, the shift requires both an individual and collective movement toward a more-than-human understanding of energy. The exhibition emphasizes our relationship to the fundamental role of this transition.

The project embraces the radiance of the sun as an inspiring and guiding force. It presents artworks that focus on the atomic power of the sun and explores our relationship with it from various perspectives—mystical, spiritual, and religious. The exhibition poses the questions: How do we, as individuals and societies, navigate? How do we navigate the solar energy currents that define us? Can it reveal different creative and destructive forces?