SOLO Contemporary and Onkaos are pleased to announce that artist Cezar Mocan has been awarded the SOLO AI ’25 AWARD.
The artist will receive an endowment of €10,000 for the production of the project A Field Guide to Orbital Melancholy, which will be presented in one of SOLO’s spaces in Madrid in early 2026.
“A Field Guide to Orbital Melancholy” begins with an unsettling question: what would happen if a satellite lied? At a time when Earth‑observation systems increasingly depend on algorithmic processes and AI models, Mocan’s work probes the moment when these measuring instruments cease to be supposedly objective observers and become unreliable narrators. Using moving image, real‑time simulation and the grammar of docu‑fiction, the project documents a speculative incident in which an observation satellite temporarily erases a place from the map. This narrative core is accompanied by a series of satellite photographs of operational landscapes, phantom islands and quasi‑fictional locations—commissioned and altered with AI—that exist either in the territory or on the map, but not both. Drawing on the history of cartographic deception—from fraudulent landscapes to “paper towns” printed on maps to prevent plagiarism—the work renders orbital infrastructure as a world‑making apparatus, materialising the idea that our technologies of planetary vision not only record reality but actively participate in its construction.
The international jury —Pita Arreola, Rachel Falconer, Alex Estorick, Peter Bauman and Elena Carbajal— collaborated in the selection process, awarding the prize to Cezar Mocan and recognizing the finalist projects: Didio by 邊界_BRG (Biānjiè Research Group); WORLD Ø-1 by Playfool; Machine Unlearning by Sarah Friend; and Biotopy by Will Freudenheim, Wendi Yan and Darren Zhu.
Follow the conversation on social media, SOLO Contemporary’s website and our media partner Right Click Save.
About Cezar Mocan
Cezar Mocan is a Lisbon-based artist and computer programmer interested in the interplay between technology and the natural landscape. Using narrative generative systems—animated videos of infinite duration, real-time simulations built in game engines or other software—he creates worlds that recontextualize aspects of digital culture we take for granted, often in absurd ways, while investigating the power structures which mediate our relationship with technology. He is interested in the built infrastructures which enable our digital lives, as well as the ways in which their presence in the natural landscape affects our perception: the moments when utility becomes nostalgia. Drawing on media archaeology and art history, his research process traces the origins of our current thought patterns around (technological) progress.
Some of his past works have been exhibited at Panke Gallery (Berlin), Office Impart (Berlin), Onassis ONX Studio (New York), Artemis Gallery (Lisbon), Inter/Access (Toronto), Athens Digital Art Festival, Romanian Design Week (Bucharest) and The Wrong Biennale. His real-time simulation work, Arcadia Inc. was recognized as a 2021 winner of the Lumen Prize in Art and Technology. Cezar holds a B.S. in Computer Science (2016) from Yale University and an M.P.S. in New Media Art (2021) from New York University, where he also served as a research resident and adjunct professor.