SESTRY FELDMAN WORLD: Imagining Tomorrow to Better Understand Today
Written by T.K. Mills
Published on July 10th, 2026
Stepping inside SESTRY FELDMAN WORLD, you’re transported into a future that feels strangely familiar. Set in the year 2050, the exhibition invites audiences into the home of a woman married to artificial intelligence, where family photographs, domestic interiors, paintings, conceptual objects, music, and immersive installation blur the line between science fiction and reality. Yet beneath the speculative premise lies a deeper question: How are the stories we tell ourselves shaping the world we’re already living in?
Opening July 10 at The Boiler within ELM Foundation in Brooklyn, SESTRY FELDMAN WORLD marks the first U.S. exhibition by Ukrainian twin artists Nicole and Mishel Feldman. Presented by Pulse Ukraine, the multidisciplinary exhibition arrives alongside a documentary chronicling the sisters’ international artistic practice, introducing New York audiences to a body of work that moves fluidly between painting, installation, public art, animation, and filmmaking.
For Sestry Feldman, however, the exhibition isn’t simply about envisioning the future. It’s about understanding the present.
“We don’t pretend to own the truth,” the artists explain. “There is no single objective reality. This is simply our perspective on the world.”
That perspective forms the foundation of SESTRY FELDMAN WORLD. Throughout the exhibition, each room extends contemporary social conditions toward their logical extremes, exploring consumerism, geopolitical instability, climate anxiety, technological dependence, and the increasingly blurred relationship between humans and algorithms. Rather than offering predictions, the artists construct an environment where visitors are encouraged to question the assumptions that quietly shape everyday life.
“The exhibition explores the illusions that shape each person’s subjective reality,” the artists shared. “Everyone lives in their own world, shaping it and filling it with whatever feels real to them, whether they realize that influence or not.”
The result is an experience that feels simultaneously personal and universal. Instead of presenting a singular narrative, the installation becomes a mirror, asking visitors to consider not only what the future might become, but how their own perceptions influence the answers they find.
That fascination with perspective extends beyond the gallery walls. Alongside their visual practice, Sestry Feldman have been developing an ongoing documentary project examining the intersection of art, society, and political transformation across multiple countries. Living through Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally shaped their worldview, making documentation feel less like a creative choice than a historical necessity.
“The world is witnessing events today that are hard to imagine,” they reflect. “They simply have to be documented.”
Rather than focusing exclusively on conflict itself, the artists are interested in the invisible systems surrounding it: propaganda, collective memory, ideology, and the ways information shapes public consciousness.
“We’re interested in how information shapes consciousness, how ideological viruses—propaganda—can influence society, and how art has the power to transform the way people think.”
Their documentary practice follows these questions through conversations with artists, travels across countries, and observations of how different societies respond to crisis. In many ways, it complements the exhibition’s fictional future by grounding speculative ideas within present-day realities.
Despite the weight of these subjects, SESTRY FELDMAN WORLD isn’t driven by pessimism. Instead, it reflects an enduring curiosity about humanity’s ability to adapt.
One of the exhibition’s most striking installations imagines a future domestic environment where artificial intelligence has become deeply integrated into everyday relationships. Yet the artists resist framing AI as either salvation or catastrophe.
“We see it as a magnifying glass,” they explain.
Every technological revolution, they argue, changes what it means to be human. Cars transformed movement. The internet transformed communication. Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly transform creativity, but not eliminate it.
“Art may stop being as exclusive or mystified with the invention of AI, but it will never stop being a bridge between a person and their subconscious.”
For the sisters, the more compelling question isn’t whether AI will replace artists, but why humans continue trying to create counterparts capable of reflecting ourselves back to us.
“What’s most interesting is that the human being, as a creator, tries to recreate a counterpart—someone to talk to, someone to share this awareness of their own loneliness with.”
Those questions resonate even more deeply given the artists’ experiences growing up in Ukraine during a period of extraordinary upheaval. While war has inevitably influenced their work, they resist reducing Ukrainian identity to conflict alone.
“Art is a language through which we can communicate with the subconscious,” they say.
They describe crisis as a process of inner reevaluation, one that forces fears, hopes, and buried emotions to the surface. At the same time, they point toward the cultural myths and archetypes that continue to shape Ukrainian resilience.
“It is a difficult time now, but Ukrainians know how and love to live freely,” they explain. “Because in Ukrainian culture, there is no archetype of the ‘slave.’”
Even their decision to debut the project in New York reflects a long-running cultural dialogue. Raised on American hip-hop, New York graffiti, The Simpsons, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hollywood cinema, and today’s technological innovations emerging from Silicon Valley, the city represents more than an exhibition destination.
“It feels like this place is already charged with people and ideas we’ve been in dialogue with for a long time—we just haven’t met yet.”
That conversation extends through Pulse Ukraine, the collective producing both the exhibition and documentary. What began as a meeting in Kyiv quickly evolved into a collaborative creative partnership.
“We see Pulse not just as producers, but as co-authors of the project.”
The collaboration continues beyond the exhibition itself. SESTRY FELDMAN WORLD also serves as the foundation for Technosapiance, an animated universe the artists are currently developing that imagines a new stage in human evolution shaped by artificial intelligence, quantum thinking, and shifting perceptions of identity.
“There is a limitation in having only one perspective on any given question,” they explain. “Animation allows us to open up multiple perspectives through different characters, who are essentially reflections of one person in dialogue with themselves.”
Perhaps that’s the central idea running throughout SESTRY FELDMAN WORLD. Rather than offering conclusions, the exhibition proposes questions. Every room, every object, and every imagined future invites viewers to examine the assumptions they’ve inherited about technology, truth, identity, and one another.
“We’re sharing what we’ve come to understand over the years we’ve been living on this planet,” the artists reflect. “Art gives us answers, and people give us questions.”
T.K. Mills is the Editor-in-Chief of UP Magazine, a street art publication based in New York City. After receiving a Master’s Degree in Global Affairs, he discovered a love for graffiti while backpacking through Cuba and pursued life as a writer. Outside of UP, T.K. enjoys writing poetry, personal travel essays, and occasionally short stories. His work has been published in The Smart Set, The Vignette Review, Genre Urban Arts, and Eternal Remedy among others. Beyond art, T.K. loves reading and traveling.
Insta: @t.k.m85
Website: www.tkmills.com