Art in the Age of Anxiety

Artists and writers examine the bombardment of information, misinformation, emotion, deception, and secrecy in online and offline life in the post-digital age.

Every day we are bombarded by information, misinformation, emotion, deception, and secrecy in our online and offline lives. How does the never-ending flow of data affect our powers of perception and decision making? This richly illustrated and boldly designed collection of essays and artworks investigates visual culture in the post-digital age.

The essays, by such leading cultural thinkers as Douglas Coupland and W. J. T. Mitchell, consider topics that range from the future of money to the role of art in a post-COVID-19 world; from mental health in the digital age to online grieving; and from the mediation of visual culture to the thickening of the digital sphere. Accompanying an ambitious exhibition conceived by the Sharjah Art Foundation and volume editor and curator Omar Kholeif, the book is a work of art and a labor of love, emulating the labyrinthine corridors of the exhibition itself. Created by a group of writers, artists, designers, photographers, and publishers, Art in the Age of Anxiety calls upon us to consider what our collective future will be and how humanity will adapt to it.

Omar Kholeif, a writer, curator, and cultural historian, is Director of Collections and Senior Curator at Sharjah Art Foundation. Named a "Game-changer" by British GQ and one of the "Art World's Global Influencers" by the international art magazine Apollo, he has curated more than 100 exhibitions and special projects. He is the editor of the Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press volume Moving Image; editor of You Are Here: Art After the Internet; and the author of Goodbye, World! Looking at Art in the Digital Age (Sternberg Press).