Sharmilla Ganesan on Belonging and Sorting at Salzburger Kunstverein's CAPTCHA Realism

Sharmilla Ganesan, a Malaysian writer and critic, reflects on her experience at Salzburger Kunstverein's exhibition 'CAPTCHA Realism' in spring 2026. The exhibition questions who defines what being human means in a machine-mediated world. Ganesan, who grew up watching Sesame Street in Malaysia in the late 1980s, describes being trained to sort and categorize, and later being sorted by CAPTCHA tests. She arrives expecting not to see herself or her part of the world represented, a feeling she connects to being a critic from a small, often-overlooked country operating in Global North art spaces. The exhibition features works by Linda Lach ('all keys, all times', 2026), a giant latex-covered structure with scattered elements evoking seashores and refugees; Magdalena Berger ('Certain Expectation', 2026), a blue-lit installation with engraved metal plaques; and Kateryna Lysovenko ('Creation, Catastrophe, Creation, Again and Again', 2026), a series of wall paintings snaking the circular ground-floor wall. Ganesan initially struggles to connect with the works, running them through a checklist of representation, but eventually finds resonance by leaning into the textures and forms, particularly Lysovenko's imagery of dehumanization that reminds her of marginalized communities back home. She concludes that she had stopped looking for herself and found something else, becoming more willing to sit with discomfort.