--- title: "How can Art challenge AI’s Right-Wing Turn?" date: 2026-08-06 last_modified: 2026-08-06T11:20:33+02:00 generated_at: 2026-08-07T06:57:54Z url: "https://www.schirn.de/en/schirnmag/how-can-art-challenge-ais-right-wing-turn/" description: "With the rise of AI, reactionary gender roles and racist worldviews blend seamlessly with soothing images of country living, infusing the internet aesthetic of cottagecore with political meaning. What role can art play in interrupting, exposing, and critically examining AI's contribution to the spread of right-wing ideology?" image: "https://www.schirn.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/groteLambers_cult_of_tradition_single-1920x1920.jpg" language: "en-US" --- # How can Art challenge AI’s Right-Wing Turn? # How can Art challenge AI’s Right-Wing Turn? ![Two girls in floral dresses standing in a field, with the text "the cult of tradition."](https://schirn.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/groteLambers_cult_of_tradition_single.jpg) Rahel grote Lambers, Metapolitics in Domestic Disguise, 2022, 5 Objekte, je 30 × 30 × 1cm, UV-Druck auf Leinen, Bambus, Stickgarn © Courtesy of the artist 1 min reading time With the rise of AI, reactionary gender roles and racist worldviews blend seamlessly with soothing images of country living, infusing the internet aesthetic of *cottagecore* with political meaning. What role can art play in interrupting, exposing, and critically examining AI's contribution to the spread of right-wing ideology? You may have been looking for comforting images of idyllic rural life but instead found yourself drawn into the digital aesthetics of the New Right. Sticking on your scrolling fingers like sourdough, right-wing content is difficult to avoid on social media. Reactionary gender roles and racist worldviews blend seamlessly with soothing images of country living, infusing the internet aesthetic of cottagecore—a social media trend that romanticizes homesteading and is embraced by tradwives such as Nara Smith and Hannah Neeleman—with political meaning. ## Where digital public and right-wing ideology meet Berlin-based artist Rahel grote Lambers encountered this phenomenon while researching the idea of Heimat during the pandemic. She was struck by how easily seemingly harmless images led to far-right content. For her, this revealed how the digital, often AI-infused, public sphere has become a space where the far right appropriates established visual traditions. Her work “Metapolitics in Domestic Disguise” (2022) reacts to this phenomenon. Printed on linen, images of women in domestic settings are embroidered with phrases identifying the features of fascism described by Umberto Eco in his essay [*Ur-Fascism*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism). Rather than reproducing the message of those imageries, Lambers exposes their often-subtle connection to the ideology of the New German Right. What role can art play in interrupting, exposing, and critically examining AI’s contribution to the spread of right-wing ideology? This ambitious question lay at the heart of the workshop *Generating Counter-Publics? – Art, AI, and Right-Wing Dynamics*, where Rahel grote Lambers presented her artistic practice. Organized by the Institute for Social Research (IfS), and the Network for Terrorism Research (NTF), the two-day event from July 20–21 brought together artists and scholars in Frankfurt am Main for an interdisciplinary discussion of one of the most pressing issues in today's digital culture. ![Two girls in floral dresses standing in a field, with the text "the cult of tradition."](https://schirn.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/groteLambers_cult_of_tradition_single.jpg) Rahel grote Lambers, Metapolitics in Domestic Disguise, 2022, 5 Objekte, je 30 × 30 × 1cm, UV-Druck auf Leinen, Bambus, Stickgarn © Courtesy of the artist ![Circular image of a person in front of a stone wall, with the text "fear of difference" on it.](https://schirn.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/groteLambers_fear_of_difference_single.jpg) Rahel grote Lambers, Metapolitics in Domestic Disguise, 2022, 5 Objekte, je 30 × 30 × 1cm, UV-Druck auf Leinen, Bambus, Stickgarn © Courtesy of the artist ## Public sphere and counter-public The global circulation of mass-produced and AI-generated content on social media—described as "slopaganda" or "AI flooding"—has become an increasingly important tool in the hands of authoritarian actors. Holding on to the political concept of counter-publics as alternative sites to the hegemonic production of public opinion, the workshop explored whether art can still generate spaces of critical reflection within a media landscape fundamentally reshaped by digital platforms and artificial intelligence. Among the workshop’s many contributions, a panel discussion featuring Anne Simone Kiesel, Katrin Köppert and Antonio Somaini tackled this question from different perspectives. Working as both a scholar and a curator, Somaini argued for a new form of visual literacy capable of understanding what he calls “infrastructural images”: highly mediated images that compress the infrastructural layers from which they emerge. Köppert, who also delivered a compelling keynote on the fragmentation of the digital public sphere drawing on Black radical thought such as Sylvia Winter, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Rizvana Bradley a.o., emphasized the central role of infrastructure at a moment when processes of fascization intersect with neoliberal individualism. Rather than merely reproducing the conditions of its own production, she argued, art should create alternative infrastructures through its very making. Art historian and critic Anne Simone Kiesel pointed to Mimi Ọnụọha’s “Ground Truths” (2025) as an example of this challenge. The 16-minute docu-fiction film follows Ọnụọha’s attempt to develop a machine-learning model capable of identifying plausible locations of mass graves of Black people across Texas. As the artist writes on her website, the work asks: “What happens when the tools we trust to reveal truth are built from the very systems that produce erasure?” In doing so, “Ground Truths” exposes the tensions that arise when AI is used to produce alternative forms of knowledge. ![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/692f1808f9a01f48c2fa30ac/8c09a145-022b-4e17-bab1-682266e49fb3/01_GroundTruths_film-still_courtestyoftheartist.jpg?format=1000w) Mimi Ọnụọha, Ground Truths, 2025 Image via[ https://www.mimionuoha.com/](https://www.mimionuoha.com/) #### “What happens when the tools we trust to reveal truth are built from the very systems that produce erasure?” Mimi Ọnụọha #### A matter of infrastructural (in)dependance Ọnụọha’s work resonates with “Reinscribing the Dondorf” (2025) by Ania Szczepańska, currently on view in the exhibition “[The World Through AI](https://www.schirn.de/en/exhibition/the-world-through-ai/)” at SCHIRN. Invited to engage with the layered and politically contested history of the Dondorf Druckerei, the artist and scholar created a film that reflects on the possibilities and limitations of AI when working with archival materials to write contemporary history. As Dominik Laute and I have argued [elsewhere](https://www.schirn.de/en/schirnmag/superform-und-supermeme-gedanken-zu-thomas-bayrles-kunst-und-meme-culture/), memes often conceal and perpetuate particular perspectives by presenting them as universally valid. The rise of “meme wars” is therefore hardly surprising. As the workshop’s title suggests, artistic practices that aim at countering such dynamics of digital fascization cannot do so on the surface of content generation. Rather, they need to steer the attention to the infrastructural dimensions that dominate today’s AI-driven image production, while reorienting the affective reactions that such unsettling look into the depths of technological abstraction may imply. [![A woman with short blonde hair smiles slightly, standing in a room by a window with her arms crossed.](https://schirn.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Schirn_Presse_Portraet_Ania-Szczepanska-©-Pawel-Sobczyk.jpg) Ähnlicher Artikel ### 3 questions for Ania Szczepańska](https://www.schirn.de/en/schirnmag/3-questions-for-ania-szczepanska/) ![Two people sit in front of a projector displaying historical footage of a printing house.](https://schirn.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Schirn_Presse_Ania-Szczepanska_Reinscribing-the-Dondorf_2026_c_Norbert-Miguletz.jpg) The World Through AI, 2026, installation view, Hito Steyerl "Mechanical Kurds" (2025) © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2026, photo: Norbert Miguletz ![Industrial building with a tall chimney, a hall in the foreground, modern architecture and bare branches in the background.](https://schirn.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/VERSION_260506.STILLS_0000.jpg) Ania Szczepańska, Reinscribing the Dondorf, 2026 Courtesy of the artist ## Generating Counter-Publics? – Art, AI, and Right-Wing Dynamics Workshop, July 20–21, 2026 **Speakers:** Anne Simone Kiesel Antoine Turillon Antonio Somaini Heiko Schmid Katharina Weinstock Katrin Köppert Lara Metzenmacher Lea Sascha Furbach Mona Behfeld Paula Muhr Rahel grote Lambers Viktoria Rochambeau Yuliana Mosheeva **Organized by:** Franziska Wildt (Institut für Sozialforschung) Isabelle Holz (Netzwerk Terrorismusforschung e.V.)