On Show / No Show is a project developed in 2021 that questioned what makes an exhibition feel real. At a time when physical events were disappearing, travel was restricted, and cultural life was increasingly experienced through images on screens, WhiteNoiseDada created three fictional exhibitions and collections that appeared to have taken place in different locations around Europe. In reality, all three exhibitions were staged inside the studio.

The project began during the Covid pandemic, when cruise ships were stranded in ports around the world with no passengers on board. For the first fictional exhibition, we imagined an exhibition taking place on one of these ships. The studio was transformed into a theatrical setting, using elements associated with the luxury cruise industry in both the spatial design and the presentation of the objects. Through careful styling, photography, and post production, the resulting images suggested an exhibition that had taken place somewhere far beyond the studio.

The second exhibition was supposedly presented inside a church in Rome. Again, the entire setting was constructed in the studio. The architecture, atmosphere, and presentation were designed to create the impression of an existing exhibition in a specific and recognizable location. The third exhibition was planned for Berlin, extending the project into a series of imagined cultural events rather than a single exhibition.

Photographer Jan Willem Kaldenbach documented the installations and digitally edited the images to create the illusion that the exhibitions had taken place in these locations. The images were subsequently shared with the press, deliberately entering the same channels through which real exhibitions and cultural events are announced and documented.

At the centre of On Show / No Show was the culture of FOMO, the fear of missing out, and the growing dependence on images as proof of experience. An exhibition could appear to have happened simply because there were convincing photographs of it. The project played with the assumption that an image represents a real event, questioning where documentation ends and fiction begins.

The timing of the project became an essential part of its story. As the Covid restrictions became increasingly severe, international travel was prohibited and eventually a full lockdown made the imagined exhibitions progressively harder to maintain as believable events. What began as a playful experiment in fiction and expectation was forced to stop when reality itself became too restrictive.

On Show / No Show was created before generative AI became part of everyday visual culture. Today, the questions raised by the project have become even more relevant. Images can be generated, manipulated, and circulated without any physical event behind them. By staging exhibitions that never existed, WhiteNoiseDada explored an early version of this uncertainty, asking how easily an image can turn fiction into something that feels real.