تشكيل المستقبل | Shaping the Future – VCUarts Richmond x Qatar Exhibition Exchange

Qatar Campus – Oct. 01–28, 2025
Machines of Loving Grace
Project Space, Saffron Hall
Free – Open invitation

Richmond Campus: Oct. 13–Nov. 1, 2025
Qatar Week Exhibition 2025: Digital Drift
The Anderson, Richmond, Virginia, USA
Free – Open invitation

As part of the annual exhibition exchange between VCUarts’ Richmond and Qatar campuses, تشكيل المستقبل | Shaping the Future showcases the advanced digital fabrication and design capabilities of the two schools, highlighting the profound impact of these technologies on research, innovation and learning. 

Two exhibitions will be presented concurrently: on the Qatar campus, Machines of Loving Grace will showcase selected projects from VCUarts Richmond’s Digital Fabrication course, taught by Chris Mahonski. The Richmond campus will present Digital Drift, featuring projects selected by Digital Design + Fabrication Head Shankar Padmanabhan and Coordinator Hala Amer, in collaboration with the VCUarts Qatar Gallery staff. For more information, see the exhibition descriptions below.

Machines of Loving Grace

The exhibition Machines of Loving Grace is inspired by Richard Brautigan’s 1967 poem “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace,” a work that offers a countercultural vision of the technological revolution which was then on the horizon. Brautigan’s tone hovers between utopian sincerity and ironic detachment—a tension that remains unresolved in our own anxious relationship with technology today. Many artists and designers working with digital fabrication echo this ambiguity: captivated by its seductive precision, yet unsettled by its mechanical rigidity and the questions of agency and authorship it provokes.

The works in this exhibition reflect that spectrum. Some artists take advantage of digital tools for their supra-human accuracy, while others treat digital formats as readymades or found objects. Digital processes become points of departure for experimentation, folding back on themselves in material play and cultural commentary. For many of the artists, this is a first engagement with digital fabrication, bringing fresh perspectives to the process. The works are united by that freshness and an expansive sense of curiosity and exploration, echoing Brautigan’s ambivalent vision of a future in which technology is a vehicle of both grace and control.

This exhibition is organized by Chris Mahonski and The Gallery at VCUarts Qatar, in partnership with VCUarts Richmond.

Richmond team

Chris Mahonski – Digital Fabrication Technician, Sculpture + Extended Media

Qatar team 

Dina AlKhateeb – Associate Curator of Campus Projects

Shankar Padmanabhan – Head of Digital Design + Fabrication

Chase Westfall – Head of Gallery

Syed Ahmed – Gallery Assistant

Digital Drift

Far from being a set of tools, digital fabrication is an emergent methodology in motion—a drift across disciplines, materials, and modes of making. The works in Digital Drift reveal how contemporary art and design practices are reshaped when computation meets craft.

At its core, digital fabrication affords an iterative rhythm of making and remaking, where prototypes are not endpoints but steps in a process of discovery. This capacity for rapid experimentation enables forms and ideas to evolve in real time, pushing projects beyond static design solutions toward open-ended inquiries.

Equally, material agency becomes central. In these works, materials are not passive substrates but active collaborators, responding to digital instructions with resistance, fragility, or unexpected adaptation. This reciprocity between tool and matter opens new aesthetic and structural possibilities that extend the language of design.

Many of the projects in Digital Drift move between hand and machine, merging the embodied knowledge of craft with the precision of algorithmic control. This hybridity dissolves old binaries—digital versus manual, craft versus computation—and situates making as a negotiation between tradition and technology.

Finally, the exhibition reflects a culture of collaboration. Digital fabrication thrives in shared studios and shops where artists, designers, and researchers work alongside engineers and technologists. These cross-disciplinary exchanges create an ecosystem in which ideas circulate and methodologies shift, underscoring the drift that defines contemporary practice.

By bringing together works by faculty, students, and alumni, Digital Drift frames digital fabrication as a shared space of inquiry—where experimentation, collaboration, and material exploration open new possibilities for contemporary art and design.

This exhibition is organized by The Gallery and Digital Design + Fabrication at VCUarts Qatar, in partnership with The Anderson and VCUarts Richmond.

Qatar team 

Meriem Aiouna – Associate Curator of Special Projects

Hala Amer – Digital Design + Fabrication Coordinator

Shankar Padmanabhan – Head of Digital Design + Fabrication

Chase Westfall – Head of Gallery

Richmond team

Sarah Irvin – Administrative Coordinator, The Anderson

Chris Mahonski – Digital Fabrication Technician, Sculpture + Extended Media