Inaugural cohort features newly commissioned works by Trevor Paglen, Maya Man, and Ben Frost, developed through funding, production support, and institutional partnerships designed to bring ambitious new works to audiences worldwide.
Onassis ONX—the Onassis Foundation’s global platform for art and advanced technologies—announces the launch of ONX Relay, a new commissioning and distribution initiative that supports artists creating ambitious technology-driven artworks while also building pathways for those works to reach museums, biennials, and cultural institutions around the world. Designed to bridge the gap between artistic experimentation and institutional presentation, ONX Relay combines funding with access to production resources, technical expertise, curatorial guidance, and strategic introductions to presenting institutions, helping artists realize ambitious new works whose complexity often places them beyond the reach of traditional commissioning models.
Over the course of nearly a year, this select cohort of artists—Trevor Paglen, Maya Man, and Ben Frost—will have access to the Onassis ONX studios in both New York and Athens, as well as staff for consultation, as they develop museum-scale works. Rather than treating production and presentation as separate stages, ONX Relay will emphasize institutional circulation within the creative process from the outset. The completed projects will culminate in an invitation-only convening in spring 2027, where museum directors, curators, producers, and institutional partners will preview the works and explore future exhibition, touring, and acquisition opportunities.
“Behind every work of art is a process that cannot be rushed,” said Afroditi Panagiotakou, Artistic Director of the Onassis Foundation. “Artists need time, space, and support to experiment, take risks, and imagine what does not yet exist. Onassis ONX Relay is built around that belief. What ultimately reaches audiences is the imagination, care, and dreams that brought a work into being. Technology may be the material, but the story is always human.”
As artists increasingly work with artificial intelligence, immersive media, interactive game engines, spatial computing, and other emerging technologies, the production of ambitious contemporary artworks has become significantly more complex—often requiring specialized hardware, knowledge, facilities, and institutional partnerships beyond the reach of established commissioning models. ONX Relay responds to this evolving landscape by supporting projects for long-term circulation, ensuring that public audiences around the world can encounter works that help make visible the profound ways advanced technologies are reshaping society, culture, and everyday life.
By integrating commissioning with distribution from the earliest stages of development, ONX Relay expands the role of the cultural institution beyond that of presenter or funder. The initiative situates Onassis ONX as an active partner in the creation, realization, and future life of new works, helping artists build projects that can evolve beyond a single exhibition into sustained institutional engagement.
For its inaugural cohort, ONX Relay has selected three internationally recognized artists working at the forefront of contemporary art and technology: Trevor Paglen, Maya Man, and Ben Frost. Together, their projects reflect the breadth of artistic practices the initiative seeks to advance—from artificial intelligence and computational neuroscience to generative video, immersive installation, spatial sound, and performance.
Trevor Paglen (b. 1974)
Neural Images
Trevor Paglen’s Neural Images investigates the relationship between artificial intelligence, perception, and neuroscience through a collaboration with leading computational neuroscience laboratories. Using brain-imaging data and custom neural encoding models, the project explores whether AI can generate entirely new images capable of producing unprecedented neurological responses, treating image-making as both artistic inquiry and scientific experiment.
ONX Relay will support the development of two interconnected works derived from this research: an immersive interactive installation that invites audiences into the image-generation process, and a series of large-scale paintings translated from AI-generated imagery. Together, the works examine the evolving relationship between human perception and machine intelligence while expanding the possibilities of computational image-making as a contemporary artistic medium.
Maya Man (b. 1996)
Dreams Come True
In Dreams Come True, Maya Man creates a generative multi-channel video installation centered on a fictional globally engineered K-pop-inspired girl group. Produced using AI text-to-video and text-to-music models, the work examines how entertainment industries construct identity, authenticity, and desire through increasingly algorithmic systems of image production.
Blending speculative fiction with contemporary internet culture, Dreams Come True explores the intersections of generative AI, labor, celebrity, and cultural influence. The installation’s continuously evolving structure mirrors today’s endlessly circulating social media feeds while critically examining how technologies shape both popular culture and the performance of self.
Ben Frost (b. 1980)
Prometheus
Ben Frost’s Prometheus is a large-scale multichannel video and spatial sound installation that reimagines Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound through an immersive contemporary lens. Combining filmed performance, original composition, and architectural-scale moving image, the work transforms the exhibition gallery into an environment where mythology, political resistance, and questions of endurance unfold across multiple synchronized screens.
Developed as an exhibition work from its inception, Prometheus explores themes of suppressed knowledge, sacrifice, and survival while extending Frost’s longstanding practice at the intersection of sound, installation, opera, and moving image. ONX Relay will support the project’s development through an intensive production phase leading toward institutional presentation.
The inaugural ONX Relay cohort was selected from an international pool of applicants nominated by artists, curators, museum professionals, and cultural leaders. With ONX Relay, Onassis ONX expands its commitment to act as a catalyst of digital culture by investing in the creation of ambitious new works and the infrastructure needed for those works to reach audiences around the world. Bringing together commissioning, production, and institutional engagement within a single initiative, ONX Relay aims to help shape a more sustainable future for technology-based contemporary art and the artists defining its evolution.
