The exhibition Tactics and Mythologies: Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein opened on September 6th 2024 at the Temporary House of Photography Hamburg. The exhibition is part of the new series Viral Hallucinations and presents the first institutional solo show of the New York duo Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein. The exhibition features two projects, American Glitch (2020–2024) and Long Time No See (2015–2020), both series blur the lines between documentation and fiction. Both the exhibition and the Viral Hallucinations series are curated and conceived by Nadine Isabelle Henrich, previously Curatorial Fellow at the Getty Research Institute Los Angeles and now Curator at the House of Photography of Deichtorhallen Hamburg.
The exhibition and event series Viral Hallucinations«(2024-2026) explores the expanding ecosystem of photographically-interpreted images that serveas viral carriers of imaginary worlds and fictional narratives, focusing on the media and technological conditions that drive the dynamics of a »newconspiracyism«. »Viral Hallucinations« presents a series of exhibitions, lectures, workshops, conversations and performances at the Temporary House of Photography, focusing on conceptual documentary projects and emerging voices in international photography and its experimental fringes.
In addition to the classic exhibition program, the Temporary House of Photography in Hamburg, serves as a space for the examination of current
socio-technical phenomena and digital image cultures in our algorithmically ordered and increasingly post-factual world.
The Viral Hallucinations series is supported by the Deutsche Börse PhotographyFoundation.
Andrea Orejarena (b. 1994, Colombia) & Caleb Stein (b. 1994, UK) are a multimedia artist duo currently based in the U.S. Orejarena & Stein have been nominated for a number of awards, including the Hariban/Benrido Award (chosen by Yasufumi Nakamori, Senior Curator of International Art at Tate Modern), the W. Eugene Smith Grant, and the 2023 Spotlight Awards at The Belfast Photo Festival. They are the 2024 recipients of FOAM Talent Award and The Center for Photographic Art Grant.
Their work has been published in The New York Times, The British Journal of Photography, The Guardian, i-D Vice, Vogue Italia, among many other places. They have given artist talks at the International Center of Photography (ICP), Christie’s Education, Sotheby’s Art Institute, Vassar College, The Center for Photographic Art, Penumbra Foundation, TILT and University College London. A book of their work ‘Long Time No See’ was published by Jiazazhi Press in 2022, with texts by Đỗ Tường Linh and Forensic Architecture, designed in collaboration with Brian Paul Lamotte.
As a duo and individually, their work is in a number of public & private collections, including the Nguyen Art Foundation, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The J. Paul Getty Museum, the Ann Tenenbaum & Thomas H. Lee Family Collection, MoMA (special collections), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (special collections).
Their second book ‘American Glitch’, will be published in early 2024 by Gnomic Book with an introduction by David Campany and a booklet of texts reflecting on conceptions of glitch in contemporary society with contributions from 35 renowned writers, artists, and curators. Their first museum solo show, Tactics & Mythologies: Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein will open at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg in the fall of 2024, curated by Nadine Isabelle Heinrich.
American Glitch (2020–2024) explores the intersection of documentary and fictional elements, examining the connection between mythological
narratives and disinformation tactics within the context of our networked present. Over the course of four years, Orejarena & Stein have built an unusual archive, amassing over 2,000 photographs and AI-generated images, many of which circulate online within the context of humor as a strategy of cultural resistance, conspiracy theories and the popcultural imaginary of simulation.
This artistic archive reveals a repertoire of image types, codes, patterns, and motifs that form a dynamic typology within the ever-expanding visual world of disinformation. Orejarena & Stein have transformed this examination of images—some of which playfully question our relationship to reality, while others take a more paranoid approach—into their own photographic concept, loosely inspired by an atlas of conspiracy-theory locations and spaces that contain particularly fraught construction across the US landscape.
By analyzing the metadata of these image files, such as locations tagged on social media and other contextual information, the artists were able to trace the origins of the archived images. This analysis resulted in the first cartography of conspiracy theory locations in the USA, which serves as the starting point for the exhibition »Tactics & Mythologies.« Following this map, the artists embarked on a journey through the US to document it as a »simulation.«
Their symmetrically composed photographs, taken frontally with a digital Hasselblad medium-format camera, align with the pictorial tradition of
canonical conceptual photographers like Ed Ruscha, as well as documentary-driven projects that conduct a photographic topography of the US. In a social present shaped by viral fictional narratives, the project navigates the space between documentation and fiction, physical and virtual realms, and particularly their hybrid intersections that characterize the American landscape—where simulated environments and manifest fictions converge. The large-format color photographs are presented for the first time in spatial dialogue with an image archive sculpture specifically developed for the exhibition. The collected images are projected as temporary, choreographed and layered constellations onto transparent cubes, flowing past the expansive landscapes and staged architectures in Orejarena & Stein‘s photographs like swarms of viral hallucinations. The archive sculpture reflects
Orejarena & Stein‘s ongoing exploration of visual practices online and their dynamic archives as a collective subconscious.
»LONG TIME NO SEE« (2015 – 2020)
VIRAL HALLUCINATIONS #1
Long Time No See (2015–2020) is a transnational and intergenerational multimedia project that delves into the physical and psychological aftermath of the Vietnam U.S. War. In close collaboration with the community of Làng Huu Nghi, the artist duo Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein have created a body of work that intentionally blurs the lines between documentation and fiction. The project is rooted in a collaborative process of visual exchange that began in 2015 with a conceptual framework, involving both the artist duo and the community in an ongoing dialogue of shared imagery and ideas. Orejarena & Stein lived in Làng Huu Nghi for two years, during which they learned Vietnamese sign language to communicate with the deaf residents on an equal footing, fostering close and ongoing relationships with the community. Through critical workshops, walldrawings, and post-production efforts, they crafted a sensitive and poetic project that highlights the multifaceted stories and fragmented memories of the residents.
The series incorporates multiple media layers and overlapping perspectives. Everyday moments of community, leisure, youth culture, and creativity are transformed into subtle acts of resistance and new forms of resilient memory. The duo‘s black-and-white photographs are enhanced with ink drawings, by artists Đinh Thi Huong and Nguyen Tien Hung, that add a subjective dimension to the images. These works blend observation with imagination, documentation with fiction, and perception with memory. In doing so, they offer a reimagined view of the Vietnam U.S. War, avoiding th eassignment of fixed identities or the traditional dichotomy of victors and vanquished.
