By Tina Charisma
I came into this work through a simple but urgent realization: art, culture, and technology no longer reflect the world — they actively shape it.
As a writer, advisor, and curator working at the intersection of technology and culture my practice has always been about connecting worlds that were once kept separate.
Today, those worlds have fully collapsed into one another.
At Art Basel this year, that convergence was unmistakable. Global brands such as Capital One, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, and Meta were not simply sponsoring culture — they were positioning themselves as cultural actors within it. The spectacle of contemporary culture is now inseparable from corporate power, digital infrastructure, and technological acceleration. What we are witnessing is not just an art fair, but a mirror of how power, visibility, and influence now move through society.
One of the most arresting works at this year’s fair was Regular Animals, an AI-driven installation that critiques how platform algorithms shape perception itself. Speaking to the artist, he told me:
“Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk own algorithms that control what we see and decide how we see the world. And when they want to make a change, they don’t have to lobby the UN. They don’t have to go to Congress. They just make the change.”
The installation features robotic “dogs” that photograph their surroundings and reimagine what they see through different algorithmic lenses — Warhol, Picasso, Musk, Zuckerberg. The result is unsettling and precise: a visual reminder that power today is not only political or economic — it is perceptual.
Beyond the main halls, at the Revolt Art Fair, the message was even clearer. Surveillance, resistance, identity, and power dominated the work on display. As artist Estéban Whiteside told me:
“My art cuts through the bullshit. People see it unfiltered. It forces you to either feel ashamed or empowered.”
Culture is no longer escapism. It is confrontation. It is survival. It is a battleground.
At the same time, tech giants were also offering their own vision of the future. Meta’s Ray-Ban AI glasses made their debut not as novelty, but as infrastructure — embedded directly into the cultural experience. Their collaboration with Faena Art on Es Devlin’s monumental Library of Us transformed architecture, literature, and real-time AI translation into one living, rotating organism. Nearly 2,500 books moved within a circular reflecting pool as visitors read, translated, and connected across language and culture in real time. This is not futuristic speculation. This is the present.
What became clear to me across Art Basel is this: AI is no longer a tool. AR is no longer a novelty. VR is no longer futuristic. They are all now collaborators in culture.
Equally powerful were the local narratives woven into the global spectacle. From Miami-born creatives to small business owners activating cultural space through branding, retail, and storytelling, the democratization of technology is allowing communities once locked out of elite cultural institutions to now shape them from within. As someone with deep Ghanaian heritage, I see this shift intimately. Across Africa and the diaspora, creativity and technology have become lifelines — tools for survival, for global visibility, and for cultural ownership.
And this is where the deeper shift is happening.
We are witnessing the rise of a new cultural actor: the global art consumer — mobile, digitally native, politically alert, and no longer willing to separate culture from power. This generation does not consume culture passively. They interrogate it. They remix it. They weaponize it.
What does this reveal?
That culture itself has become the new global currency.
Not identity alone. Not nationality alone. Not ideology alone. But culture — as a force of translation, belonging, resistance, and economic power. In the coming years, I believe we will see a profound shift: from identity politics toward culture as the primary organizing system for global life, especially among third-culture communities shaped by migration, technology, and hybridity.
But this shift comes with risk. Technology is not neutral. It does not simply expand access — it redistributes power. As culture moves further into digital space, questions of who gets amplified, who gets erased, and who gets locked out will only intensify, particularly for older audiences and under-resourced communities. Accessibility and inequality will evolve into a new battleground where innovation and exclusion collide.
Still, the truth remains:
Art, culture, and technology have always held power. Today, that power is no longer symbolic. It is structural. It is economic. It is geopolitical.