IRIDIA by Soliman Lopez

IRIDIA is not an exhibition in the conventional sense. It is a living system of a digital coalition of 128 elements, each one a unique mineral co-designed with an international partner, a university, a foundation, an art centre, a company, or an independent thinker. Each mineral houses an autonomous AI agent trained to address a specific planetary challenge, from resource scarcity and climate instability to biodiversity loss, technological governance, and the emerging question of interplanetary civilisation. These agents do not merely perform tasks and they function as living archives, preserving and organising the knowledge and research produced by their partner communities. As the table grows, it becomes a decentralized memory of human thought at a civilizational turning point. The ambition is explicit to found a new concept of civilisation and establish new metaphors for the future of humanity, on this planet and beyond it, in symbiosis with the natural ecosystem. The project extends an open invitation to a global network of 128 international partners. Universities, foundations, art centers, technology companies, entrepreneurs, and thinkers are welcome to co-author one element of the table, permanently inscribed in the ecosystem. The collectors of the project becomes then, foundational partners and key people of a new ecosystem. The physical anchor At the heart of IRIDIA rests one kilogram of 99.9% pure iridium, provided by Hebany Group, strategic partner and co-producer of the project. Iridium arrived on Earth through meteorite impacts millions of years ago. It is the same element whose global presence in the geological record confirmed the asteroid impact that ended the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago. It is also the material that, alloyed with platinum, constituted Le Grand K, the cylinder kept under a triple glass bell outside Paris that served as the absolute international reference for the kilogram until 2019. IRIDIA has chosen a very special moment to become real. It is officially presented at Art Dubai, the most relevant international contemporary art event in the Middle East, a place at the epicentre of one of the most serious armed conflicts of recent years. A conflict that is both witness and executioner of our distorted system of value, addicted to natural resources as currency. This scenario becomes the ideal context in which to carry out Act I, with the first official and public presentation of the Declaration of Appropriation. During the event, in a special format, a body of works is also presented, such as Trajectories, an algorithm materialized through plotter drawings that shows how the system can collapse on the basis of a few slight coincidences; Specimens, a self-generative work of digital mineral entities with prices anchored to the real values of rare earths and other minerals; and The Unownable Object, a 3D sculpture resulting from the algorithmic interpolation of the current three dimensional scientific models of Psyche, marked with a molecular solution invisible to the human eye but visible under the infrared spectrum, developed in collaboration with the company Elementag. We have published a complete website, understood as part of the work itself, where you can read, listen (to the message sent to space) and interact with the project, take part in it, acquire Specimens, commission Trajectories, rotate The Unownable Object and collaborate in the Coalition toward the creation of new minerals for this periodic table in which, literally, everything is still to be built. Solimán López is a contemporary artist whose practice operates at the intersection of art, science, technology and ecological transition. His work investigates how information, memory and life can be stored, transmitted and transformed across physical, biological and digital systems, using technology as both a conceptual and technical mediator.