Exhibition view of Sui generis (2024). Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea, Lisboa, Portugal (2025). Printed publication (dictionary), digital microscope,
white gloves, table, stool, custom machine learning model. Variable dimensions.
white gloves, table, stool, custom machine learning model. Variable dimensions.
Sofia Taipa’s Sui generis at Palazzo Madama
Date: 29/06/2026
Author: Mariana Baião Santos
Keywords: algorithmic bias / data and materiality / identity / subjectivity
From 8 to 10 July, Sofia Taipa’s Sui generis will be presented at xCoAx Exhibition 2026, inside the historic setting of Palazzo Madama in Turin. It is a fitting place for a work concerned with the authority of knowledge, the rituals of classification and the fragile systems through which identity is made legible. Against the weight of the Palazzo’s historical memory, Taipa introduces a dictionary rewritten by machine learning: an object that looks archival, almost obsolete, yet belongs entirely to the technological present.
In Sui generis, the dictionary, one of the most authoritative objects of Western culture, becomes a strange instrument of judgement. Instead of definitions, each word is assigned a numerical score by a custom machine-learning model trained to infer how much the artist might “like” or “dislike” it, on a scale from 0 to 100. The premise is almost ridiculous, and deliberately so. Its force lies in the bluntness of the operation, language is stripped of meaning and returned as preference; subjectivity is compressed into a number; the self is made to appear measurable.
Detailed view of Sui generis (2024). Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea, Lisboa, Portugal (2025). Printed publication (dictionary),
digital microscope, white gloves, table, stool, custom machine learning model. Variable dimensions.
Taipa为算法偏见赋予了物件、表面与仪式。算法成为一本书，而书则成为等待检验的对象。观众通过一系列近似临床操作的动作接近这部词典：白色手套、显微镜、桌子和凳子。阅读被检验所取代，词语如同证据一般呈现在观者面前——这一转变构成作品的核心。《Sui generis》所呈现的预测暴力，并非来自系统的失灵，而恰恰来自系统按照既定设计正常运行的过程。模型并不了解艺术家本人，它只能通过模式、关联和推断出的偏好，生产出一个关于她的版本。在这里，身份成为一种带有偏差的输出结果。
Taipa gives algorithmic bias an object, a surface and a ritual. The algorithm becomes a book, and the book becomes something to be examined. The viewer approaches the dictionary through a clinical set of actions: white gloves, a microscope, a table, a stool. Reading is replaced by inspection, where the word is encountered as evidence - this shift is central to the work. Sui generis stages the violence of prediction as a system doing exactly what it was designed to do. The model does not know the artist, it only produces a version of her through patterns, associations and inferred preference. Here, identity becomes skewed output.
Detailed view of Sui generis (2024). Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea, Lisboa, Portugal (2025). Printed publication (dictionary), digital microscope,
white gloves, table, stool, custom machine learning model. Variable dimensions.
在Palazzo Madama，《Sui generis》处于新旧知识架构之间：词典、档案、珍奇柜与数据集分别属于不同的历史阶段，却都试图对世界进行分类和排序。Taipa将机器学习的逻辑置入一个由更古老的权威形式所塑造的空间，并由此追问：当分类系统从书架转移至黑箱时，究竟发生了什么实质性的改变？
At Palazzo Madama, the work sits between older and newer architectures of knowledge: the dictionary, the archive, the cabinet of curiosities, the dataset, each belongs to a different historical moment, yet all are concerned with ordering the world. Taipa places the logic of machine learning inside a space marked by older forms of authority, asking what has really changed when systems of classification move from bookshelves to black boxes.
作品标题“Sui generis”意为“自成一类”或“独一其类”，其中包含着整个项目的反讽意味。这一表达指向独特性、例外状态与不可化约性，而Taipa的作品则追问：当系统被设计为通过相似性理解我们时，个体的独特性是否仍能存续？机器学习模型依靠邻近关系运作，通过将不同模式相互比对来完成分类与预测。对于机器而言，变得可识别，在某种意义上意味着不断被比较，直至被归入它所熟悉的范围。
The title, Sui generis, meaning “of its own kind”, carries the irony of the project. The phrase suggests singularity, exception, irreducibility, Taipa’s work asks whether such a thing can survive inside systems designed to understand us through resemblance. Machine-learning models operate by proximity, they classify and predict by locating patterns in relation to other patterns, to become legible to the machine is, in some sense, to be compared until one becomes familiar.
这件作品同时也是对语言、作者身份与当代生活中行政化习惯的研究。词典长期以来承诺着一种秩序：一个词语、一条释义，以及它在整体结构中的特定位置。Taipa打断了这一承诺。她的词典不再定义词语，而是为词语赋值；意义被排名所取代，页面原有的权威也受到评分逻辑的侵染。作品在材料与形式上的敏锐，正来自这种克制。Taipa将一个计算系统减速，直至其内部预设变得可见。
This is also a study of language, authorship and the administrative habits of contemporary life. The dictionary has long promised order: a word, a definition, a place within the structure. Taipa interrupts that promise, her dictionary does not define words, it assigns value to them, meaning is displaced by ranking, and the authority of the page is contaminated by the logic of the score. The material intelligence of the work lies in this restraint. Taipa takes a computational system and slows it down until its assumptions become visible.
Detailed view of Sui generis (2024). Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea, Lisboa, Portugal (2025). Printed publication (dictionary),
digital microscope, white gloves, table, stool, custom machine learning model. Variable dimensions.
《Sui generis》已经开始进入更广泛的国际讨论。作品在“A Arte Chegou ao Colombo: Na Era da Inteligência Artificial”中获得荣誉提名，其艺术语言与材料表达由此得到认可；与此同时，作品被收录于Les presses du réel出版的《Penser l’intelligence artificielle》，并由此进入有关人工智能的更广泛哲学讨论。在汇集计算、传播、美学与艺术研究的xCoAx 2026中，这件作品获得了一个尤其准确的讨论语境。
Sui generis has already begun to situate itself within a wider international conversation. Its honourable mention at A Arte Chegou ao Colombo: Na Era da Inteligência Artificial recognised the strength of Taipa’s artistic and material language, while its inclusion in “Penser l’intelligence artificielle”, published by Les presses du réel, places the work in dialogue with broader philosophical debates around artificial intelligence. At xCoAx 2026, where computation, communication, aesthetics and artistic research meet, the work finds a particularly precise context.
在Palazzo Madama的历史环境中，《Sui generis》成为历史、词典与数据集之间的交汇点——三者都是知识得以建构、保存并受到质疑的结构。Taipa的判断机器既没有告诉我们词语意味着什么，也没有告诉我们艺术家究竟是谁。相反，它揭示了一个更令人不安的问题：任何声称能够将生命转译为数据的系统，本身都具有无法消除的不稳定性。
In the setting of Palazzo Madama, Sui generis becomes a meeting point between history, the dictionary and the dataset: three structures through which knowledge is built, preserved and questioned. Taipa’s judgement machine does not tell us what words mean, nor does it tell us who the artist is, but in turn, it shows something more unsettling: the instability of every system that claims to translate a life into data.
艺术家介绍
About the Artist
Sofia Taipa是一位往返于伦敦与里斯本工作的视觉艺术家。她以雕塑与装置为主要媒介，探索技术与物质性之间的交汇关系。通过以物质形式转译数据，Taipa试图拆解“数字身体”的边界，以及现代技术系统中如黑箱般不可见的内部结构。她以实践为基础的研究关注个体与集体身份的现象学，并探讨人们如何感知和置身于共生空间之中。Taipa并不将算法系统视为无菌且中立的工具，而是将其理解为兼具审美属性与政治作用的装置。由此出发，她的创作质疑计算性介入的运作逻辑，并以塑造当代人类经验的隐秘结构为研究基础。
Sofia Taipa is a visual artist working between London and Lisbon. She uses sculpture and installation to explore the intersection of technology and materiality. By translating data through matter, Sofia deconstructs the boundaries of the numerical body and the black box of modern technological systems. Her practice-based research investigates the phenomenology of individual and collective identity, exploring how we perceive and inhabit symbiotic spaces. Sofia positions algorithmic systems not as sterile and neutral tools, but as aesthetic and political devices. Through this lens, her work questions the operational logic of computational intervention, building on the hidden structures that shape contemporary human experience.
Sofia Taipa的作品曾在多个国际艺术机构展出，包括伦敦V&A、里斯本国家当代艺术博物馆（Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea）、科英布拉Casa das Artes Bissaya Barreto，以及伦敦Enclave 5 Gallery。她拥有伦敦大学金匠学院计算艺术硕士学位，并曾在xCoAx、Les Presses du réel及《AZAR Magazine》发表研究与作品。
Sofia’s work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the V&A, London; Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon; Casa das Artes Bissaya Barreto, Coimbra; and Enclave 5 Gallery, London. She holds an MFA in Computational Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has published with xCoAx, Les Presses du réel, and AZAR Magazine.
sofiataipa.com
@sofiataipa
About the Author
Mariana Baião Santos
Lisbon, Portugal
Mariana Baião Santos是一位往返于伦敦与里斯本工作的独立策展人、作者及文化制作人。她是艺术机构SUPERFICIAL的联合创始人。该机构专注于艺术家合作、委托创作与咨询，并致力于在文化、商业及私人领域为艺术家拓展更广泛的合作机会。她同时也是葡萄牙独立非营利机构Corrente de Ar的联合创始人，该机构主要为新兴艺术家提供支持。Santos拥有伦敦皇家艺术学院当代艺术策展硕士学位。她的实践涵盖展览策划、艺术家支持、文化合作与编辑出版平台，尤其关注职业生涯早期的艺术家，以及艺术、空间与观众之间的关系。她的工作曾获得Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation颁发的文化制作项目资助。
Mariana Baião Santos is an independent curator, writer and cultural producer working between London and Lisbon. She is the co-founder of SUPERFICIAL, n art agency focused on artist collaborations, commissions and consulting, creating broader commercial opportunities for artists across cultural, commercial and private contexts. She is also the co-founder of Corrente de Ar, an independent non-profit supporting emerging artists in Portugal. She holds an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art in London and has developed projects across exhibitions, artist support, cultural partnerships and editorial platforms, with a particular focus on early-career artists and the relationship between art, space and audience. Her work has been recognised through a cultural production grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.