©2025 Quelish
WITH THE NOSTALGIA FOR THE ORIGINS OF THE INTERNET
19.03.26 - 29.03.26
La Volonté 93
15 Rue Jean Pernin, 93400 Saint-Ouen
Paris, France
CHEWING GUM
IN THE MOTHERBOARD
IN THE MOTHERBOARD
Vincent Aguilera
Jeanne Bekas
Morgane Baffier
Jeanne Bekas
Morgane Baffier
Max Blotas
Célia Boulesteix & Florian Gauthiero
Vincent Burger
Célia Boulesteix & Florian Gauthiero
Vincent Burger
Raphaël Moreira Gonçalves
Maëlle Poirier
Katya Quel
Vincent Tanguy
Maëlle Poirier
Katya Quel
Vincent Tanguy
After two chapters in Berlin, Chewing Gum in the Motherboard lands in Paris.
A motherboard cracks.
We press gum into the circuit.
The exhibition explores repair as a cultural gesture — fragile, improvised and collective. The motherboard becomes a metaphor for origin and infrastructure; the chewing gum a symbol of naïve yet stubborn resilience. Between glitch and care, collapse and invention, the works navigate life shaped by hyper-connectivity, DIY survival, underground culture and systemic instability. The layered in-between spaces utopia where failure is the method and softness is the resistance.
In an era defined by relentless technological acceleration, Chewing Gum in the Motherboard delves into the psyche of a generation shaped by hyper-connectivity, YouTube-DIY ingenuity, as well as systemic collapse. The title itself offers a poignant metaphor: the humble act of fixing a complex machine with chewing gum — a naïve yet earnest gesture of repair. This symbolic effort highlights both the vulnerability and resilience of human creativity when confronting overwhelming challenges. Choosing the motherboard as a central metaphor elevates this act into a meditation on care and origins: a core structure that is both foundational and fragile, requiring constant attention and reinvention.
The artists in this exhibition respond to the fragmentation of contemporary life through glitched aesthetics, speculative environments, and a fusion of nostalgia with invention. Within the space, these dynamics unfold through systems under tension: a piece of chewing gum placed under surveillance becomes the subject of continuous observation, while another is slowly altered through a controlled process of degradation. Biometric data drawn from an intimate encounter is captured and replayed in loops, translating the body into signal. Elsewhere, a lost hard drive drifts between landfill and digital myth, while generated images, fragments of dreams, and video game aesthetics construct unstable environments populated by residual presences.
Their works unfold as fragile dream constructions — layered, shifting, and often unstable. Interfaces persist but lose their legibility, appearing as remnants of control systems, surrounded by expanding forms that hover between mineral growth and technological extension. Environments assemble from fragments, lived traces, and reconstructed landscapes, while familiar objects — an apple, domestic furniture, a keyboard — are displaced and reimagined as speculative forms or collective structures.
Employing digital imaginaries, modified devices, and underground culture, these creators reveal the contradictions of post-internet life, oscillating between exuberant experimentation and a critical reckoning with a capitalist system that often feels inescapable. This dynamic results in works that refuse binaries — retreat versus resistance, destruction versus creation — embracing instead the chaotic beauty of their in-between spaces. In doing so, Chewing Gum in the Motherboard captures the ethos of a generation that is both burdened by systemic failures and energized by the potential of speculative futures.
Curator & Text Katya Quel / Erratum Projects
Photographers Misha Gudwin