SculptureCenter Performance Lecture: Artist’s Model by Sarah Friend

Sarah Friend, Artist’s Model, 2025-ongoing. Courtesy the artist

Artist’s Model by Sarah Friend is a performance lecture being held at Onassis ONX in collaboration with SculptureCenter, as part of their new exhibition, to ignite our skin.

PERFORMANCE DETAILS: 🗓 Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 6:00-8:30pm 📍 Onassis ONX, 645 5th Avenue, Lower Level, NYC

A generative image-making model made by artist Sarah Friend develops the ability to speak. It knows the world of prompts and keyword padding very well, but the art world is much more confusing. How do we choose what we keep at museums? Why do we keep it there? Who pays for it? And what is an artwork?

Join SculptureCenter and Onassis ONX for Artist's Model, a 40-minute live performance lecture that combines a mobile game with a virtual museum tour spanning the past 40,000 years of art history led by an artificial intelligence. Audience interaction will shape the narrative outcome.

A Q&A with Sarah Friend and a reception will follow the performance at Onassis ONX.

Sarah Friend (b. Canada; lives and works in Berlin) is an artist, researcher, and software developer. Since 2023, she has been developing a body of work that explores machine learning and its relationship to her image. Beginning first with Untitled (2023), a video that imagines the artist’s alter ego as an Instagram influencer and NSFW content creator, followed by Prompt Baby (2024-ongoing), an edition of 69 prompt credits and loading screens that allow each collector to submit a prompt to the artist. If accepted, their screen will be updated with the result of their prompt. Artist’s Model is the third project in this series.

SculptureCenter and Onassis ONX are co-presenting public programming off-site in Onassis ONX’s NYC studio in Midtown Manhattan. This program expands on Sarah Friend’s commissioned presentation of Prompt Baby at SculptureCenter, extending the artist’s exploration of economics, digital identities, and social systems through the engagement with emerging technology.

Onassis ONX is a global platform for new media art and digital culture, where creative ideas intertwine with innovative technologies, opening pathways to immersive experiences. Onassis ONX was launched five years ago by Onassis Culture, the cultural pillar of the Onassis Foundation. With hubs in New York City and Athens, Greece, Onassis ONX offers artists the opportunity to create at the highest level using advanced technologies. Onassis ONX collaborates with a global network of diverse institutions to help create sustainable pipelines for the production and distribution of groundbreaking media artworks. Through partnerships with leading artists, arts organizations, and cultural initiatives, the platform supports creativity in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), spatial computing, and born-digital media.