Arvida Byström

Feb 20

“Wink”

20.02.2025 — 29.03.2025

PLUS-ONE Projects is proud to present “Wink”, the major first solo and retrospective of Swedish artist Arvida Byström (°1991), tracing the evolution of her work from early internet-born self-representation to her latest digital explorations. After being part in the groupshow “...And that’s only (half) the story” in 2023 at PLUS-ONE Gallery, this the first comprehensive overview of Byström’s work in Belgium. Running from 22.02- 29.03.2025, the exhibition offers a deep dive into Byström’s distinct visual language—one that blurs the lines between hyper-femininity, technology, and contemporary digital culture.

Known for her signature pastel hues, subversive self-portraiture, and exploration of online identity, Byström has become a defining voice in the digital art landscape since 2012. With a distinctive style blending internet aesthetics and references on art history, she might be the most intriguing artist of the post-internet generation. “Wink” brings together a selection of her most iconic works alongside new pieces that push the boundaries of digital self-expression in the online realm. The exhibition acts as both a playful and critical examination of how beauty, gender, and technology intersect in the age of social media.

“Wink” is structured as an immersive dive in the artists shifting perspectives on femininity, self-representation and digital intimacy. Using a broad scale of technologies and forms of presentation this exhibition tackles traditional photography, internet platform aesthetics, shifting technologies through the eye of the artist. Byström’s early photographic work (2014), deeply embedded in the DIY internet aesthetic, used soft, hyper-pink imagery and self-portraiture as a radical act of reclamation. Growing up as a teenager in and through the upcoming social media networks as Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram and others, she started to question the conventions of self-presentation. Looking at the expectations and traditional visual theme’s, the visual and ‘legal’ limitations of the platforms and the traditional beauty standards and quickly started tackling themes as agency, vulnerability, and the performativity of online identity already.

As the internet became more polarized, Byström’s work turned toward digital activism. Using photography, video, and installation, she examined issues such as online harassment, algorithmic bias, and the commodification of online femininity. During this period, her work gained global attention for its ability to critique the internet’s dual role as a space of empowerment and surveillance. Her book ‘Pictures or it didn’t happen’ (2017) a collaboration with Molly Soda, collected pictures that got banned from socials due their content, and is still today a statement of online repression. Being inspired by shifting beauty & social standards and reflecting on self-exploration in covid times (2020) her work touched upon cottage core and fairies or domestic interiors or girls bedrooms.

In her most recent works, Byström embraces emerging technologies like AI-generated imagery and machine learning to explore evolving digital identities. These works question the boundaries between authenticity and artificiality in an era where technology increasingly dictates aesthetics, self-expression, and human connection. In ‘A Cybernetic Doll’s House’, (2022) a performance held in numerous institutions all over the world, she holds conversations with an AI trained sexdoll called Harmony, creating and testing intimate relationships with the robot and the limits of the technology behind it. Her latest book ‘In the Clouds’ (2024) depicts her relationship with real time followers of a paid adult content platform, where she uses AI not only to present her fake nudes but also to keep the conversation with her followers going.

“Wink” is layered, immersing visitors in Byström’s dreamlike world, where physical and digital realities blur, but where numerous links to art history can be found. “Wink” is about digital softness, but also digital resistance,” says Byström. “It’s a play on how we present ourselves online—a moment of connection, an algorithmic suggestion, a knowing glance between strangers on the internet. It’s an invitation to explore femininity beyond the filter.”

Arvida Byström’s work has been exhibited internationally and featured in collaborations with leading cultural institutions and brands such Horsens Art Museum in Denmark, Fotografiska Berlin and New York, V&A Londen. Her latest solo exhibition ‘Who’s your Daddy’ is now on view at OK Linz in Austria.

Exhibition text written by Pieter Jan Valgaeren (Curator), 2025

Arvida Byström (°1991) lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden and Paris, France.
Byström is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is rooted in ideas that deal with the internet and its social, aesthetic and commercial implications. She is known for employing a hyper- feminine aesthetic to explore themes concerning the complexities of femininity, identity, body image, social dynamics, emerging technologies and economic principles through primarily photography, performance and sculpture work.
By her early teens, Byström was publishing stylized portraits of herself on social media platforms, effectively foreshadowing the communicative power of the selfie. The following years saw her evolve into somewhat of a proxy for a young generation cultivating their identity, expression and influence on predominantly image-based social platforms. Her early understanding of the internet and its aesthetic and communicative pervasiveness led to an artistic practice perfectly adept at deconstructing and theorizing its language.
Recent years has seen Byström branch out both materially and thematically, such as in her 2021 exhibition titled Artificial Scarcity, which was comprised of NFTs, hand-carved marble sculptures and photography that centered around themes of current and historical economic bubbles.