The For You web page, as the favored TikTok remark goes, is getting too native. I, for one, am grateful. Umber Majeed’s exhibition J😊Y TECH attracts from the visible vernacular of telephone restore shops within the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens — their densely packed cacophony of vibrant colours, screaming fonts, and plenty of languages spilling out into the sidewalks — as an extension of her ongoing Trans-Pakistan analysis mission impressed by her uncle’s now-defunct vacationer company. She builds his real-life enterprise right into a digital universe via augmented actuality (AR), video, drawings, and ceramics that mine “South Asian digital kitsch,” because the introductory textual content places it. Although its execution is a bit uneven, this one-room exhibition is likely one of the most technically ingenious I’ve seen, and is a contemporary and thrilling excavation of the fertile bodily/digital intersection between diasporic Asian and early web aesthetics.
Technological nostalgia, notably across the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, is a persistent visible theme all through the exhibition at the same time as its personal instruments are cutting-edge. One of many first works that viewers encounter is “Untitled” (2025), a one-minute single-channel video on a particular show that produces a convincing simulation of a three-dimensional field. Objects float mesmerizingly, as if in an aquarium or on a 3D screensaver. These embody a hand-drawn red-and-white checkered Apple emblem that’s one thing like an emblem for the exhibition; relics of knowledge storage like a CD-ROM and a floppy disk; and a Mughal dome that bops round like a jellyfish. The field itself works virtually like a meta knowledge storage system — not one which shops uncooked bits of knowledge reminiscent of matrices, arrays, or graphs, however one thing extra like a repository of collective reminiscence.
8-second gif of Umber Majeed, “Untitled” (2025), single-channel video on Wanting Glass 3D Spatial Show, 1 min. loop, silent
J😊Y TECH toys with and infrequently explodes the standard kind and limits of an exhibition. The daring neon-red frames of the AR works coloration extra analog parts as effectively, together with a dynamic arrow that zig-zags from the ceiling onto the highest of the partial wall that divides the exhibition diagonally and down its aspect, ending on the ground pointing towards the huge vinyl wall work “Timeline” (2024–25). A black and white, pink and white, or grey and white grid alternatively invoking the tiled flooring of a small enterprise and a clean digital house (reminiscent of in a brand new Photoshop doc) is a key motif of the exhibition — it seems on a number of partitions and is reproduced in smaller, extra playful kind inside particular person works, reminiscent of a vortex sucking in an older-generation iPhone. The motif is meant to bend and fuse the planes of actual and digital house simply as she digitally builds on her uncle’s real-life journey company.
Left: Umber Majeed, “zoom in” (2024), combined media on paper and web-based augmented realityanimation; proper: Umber Majeed, “Saath Haath” (2024), combined media on paper and web-based augmented actuality animation
Nonetheless, it could actually typically really feel just like the concepts on this exhibition can supersede their execution. Although she deliberately and successfully privileges these with the language and/or tradition she’s concentrating on — those that learn Bangla and Urdu would acknowledge phrases in these languages within the aforementioned untitled animation, for example — some works demand a whole lot of viewers no matter their background. Whilst you may acknowledge the Mughal dome that additionally floats across the similar work in the event you’re conversant in South Asian tradition or artwork historical past, you won’t comprehend it sat atop the Pakistan pavilion on the 1964–65 World Truthful except you’re listening to the Bloomburg Connects audio description or studying its transcription. Different items are inaccessible in spatial methods: Sure drawings, reminiscent of “Goes Digital” (2021), are hung inhumanly excessive, and due to this fact troublesome to see.
An untitled video work close to the top of the exhibition feels most troublesome to know. It mimics the visual-sonic-informational overload of social media — there’s image-editing, adverts, webpages, archival data, iPhone display screen recordings, and icons bouncing concerning the three channels, to not point out a group of real-life ceramic sculptures. It successfully satirizes the form of quick-cut brainrot endemic to Youtube essays and TikToks, however to what finish? I walked away with a whole lot of fascinating data buzzing round my head — jewellery designer Barbara Anton was commissioned to spotlight the pure pink pearl farming trade in what’s now Bangladesh as a part of the World Truthful, and “String of Pearls” can be a time period invented by the USA to check with a community of Chinese language army and business amenities, for example — however not the structure to place it collectively.
Set up view of Umber Majeed, “WE CAN FIX IT” (2025), ceramic, decal, and wooden
Majeed’s work additionally spurred maybe the deepest and most substantive episode to this point in my ongoing struggles with my notion of “good” and “bad” aesthetics, and whether or not they come from an internalization of problematic hierarchies. I cherished “WE CAN FIX IT” (2025), a wonky signboard product of decals on ceramic and wooden that bears the title together with light pictures of defunct gadgets. It felt like a better, sharper, and extra politically agitative model of the work of Shanzhai Lyric. Relatively than merely arguing for the great thing about pedestrian tradition, as Shanzhai Lyric does with misspelled English phrases in Chinese language clothes and Majeed does with diasporic South Asian-owned tech restore retailers, the work additionally factors towards the potential of those visible languages to unsettle dominant kinds. To me, they characterize the trickle-up of hyperlocal moderately than the trickle-down of company tradition, the proof of life carved out from inhospitable terrain. However I additionally questioned if I responded to the work as a result of I may simply think about it in a white dice gallery.
I additionally questioned if somebody who was much less conversant in the visible tradition of Queens and invested within the associated Chinese language/Chinese language diasporic aesthetic of Shanzhai might have a differing opinion of “WE CAN FIX IT.” And I thought of whether or not a associated bias in background (reminiscent of my very own failed forays within the medium) may form my emotions about her drawings. Some, such because the AR-activated “Saath Haath” (2024), depicting arms clasped collectively beneath a horizon line as darkish bands join them above, felt slightly juvenile to me of their technical clumsiness, whether or not intentional or not. However they do make for an excellent distinction with the slickness of the exhibition’s digital innovation, in addition to mesh effectively with the stuttering visible tradition of an early web, which is endearing and nostalgic.
J😊Y TECH cuts notably deep for a era of Asian Individuals who got here of age throughout the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s, and noticed the aesthetics of their diasporic tradition meld, typically queasily, with that of early digital tradition. Majeed’s work is perhaps the primary time I’ve actually encountered a significant exploration of that concept, which brings with it the bags of all that cultural anxiousness, in addition to pleasure. I can’t wait to see the place Majeed — and the remainder of the vanguard of this explicit area of interest the place first-gen diaspora meets early-gen tech — goes subsequent.
Set up view of Umber Majeed, “Untitled” (2025), 3-channel video set up with sound, ceramics, and vinyl
Left: screenshot of directions for AR activation of artworks on iPhone; proper: screenshot of Umber Majeed, “zoom in” (2024) as seen via the iPhone digital camera
Set up view of Umber Majeed, “Timeline” (2024–25), PVC vinyl, ~15.7 x 45.1 ft (~4.8 x 13.7 m)
Set up view of Umber Majeed, “Joy Tech License” (2024), combined media on paper
Set up view of Umber Majeed: J😊Y TECH
Umber Majeed: J😊Y TECH continues on the Queens Museum (Flushing Meadows, Corona Park, Queens) via January 18, 2026. The exhibition was curated by Lindsey Berfond.
