AI artist Emi Kusano’s first solo exhibition in New York, “EGO in the Shell” — Official collaboration with “GHOST IN THE SHELL”

AI Artist Emi Kusano’s First Solo Exhibition in New York, “EGO in the Shell” — Official Collaboration with “GHOST IN THE SHELL” ​
Fictionera Inc. Press Release: September 22, 2025 AI artist Emi Kusano holds her first solo exhibition in New York, “EGO in the Shell,” in official collaboration with “GHOST IN THE SHELL” OFFLINE GALLERY PRESENTS SEGO IN THE SHELL: GHOST INTERROGATION – Artist Emi Kusano’s first solo exhibition in New York
https://prcdn.freetls.fastly.net/release_image/121176/9/121176-9-bf02ff66e174b074ad6b663665273642-1080×1350.png

September 22, 2025, New York – Offline, a new gallery operated by cutting-edge digital art platform SuperRare, is pleased to present “EGO in the Shell: Ghost Interrogation,” an immersive solo exhibition by artist Emi Kusano. The exhibition is an official collaboration with the cyberpunk masterpiece, “GHOST IN THE SHELL.” Opening on October 8th, this exhibition takes inspiration from the world of “GHOST IN THE SHELL” and transforms the Lower Manhattan gallery space into a “site” where memory, surveillance, and identity intersect. It explores how the “self” is reconstructed and simultaneously destabilized in the age of generative AI. Fusing cyberpunk philosophy with Eastern concepts such as “emptiness” and “engi” in Buddhist thought, Kusano begins his work by building custom models of his own face and body using AI to generate “fictional childhoods” that do not actually exist. This process unfolds along three axes: a series of video works depicting fictional childhoods created by AI; a series of works exploring the ever-accelerating future of the world of “Ghost in the Shell”; and immersive installations such as CRT monitor sculptures and a holographic interrogation room experience. These three pillars intertwine to create a space that blurs the boundaries between memory and fiction, past and future. “This project is a ritual about the fragility of memory and the instability of the self. By combining AI reconstructions with fragments of my own past, I hope to invite audiences to experience the ambiguity of ‘permanence’ and
‘impermanence.’ ‘Ghost in the Shell’ has had a major influence on my creative work to date. Today’s world is overflowing with information, and algorithms are accelerating division. It’s precisely for this reason that I hope to invite viewers to reconsider the meaning of remembering, feeling, and living in reality.” — Emi Kusano (Artist) “In today’s world, the boundaries that separate the self—mind and body, past and future, organic and artificial—are dissolving. Ghost in the Shell anticipated this disintegration decades ago. Emi Kusano reinvents that vision through the contemporary lens of AI,
surveillance, and digital ritual. By combining ancient rituals of remembrance and memory with futuristic technology, this exhibition becomes a meditation on the self and the self that is lost, reflected, and inscribed alongside machines.” –Mika Bal-On Nesher
(Director/Curator of Offline) “When I look at Kusano’s works, I feel a strange sense of nostalgia, even though I know they are fictional memories that don’t exist. Personal records from childhood and everyday scenes from postwar Japan appear fused with futuristic technology, shaking us with a sense of nostalgia and unease for nonexistent memories. Just as photographer Cindy Sherman in the 1970s exposed the fictional nature of herself by playing the female images circulating in the media, Kusano uses AI to fabricate nonexistent memories, revealing the fragility and instability of identity. Kusano has inherited and developed the question posed by “Ghost in the Shell”