Christopher Meerdo: Exuvium

Functioning as active network nodes, sculptures from Christopher Meerdo’s Exuvium series (2025) operate as residual infrastructures: dormant systems reanimated into autonomous, signal-emitting forms. Each sculpture houses a localized Wi-Fi access point that grants temporary access to fragments of concealed or displaced leaked digital material.

Resembling chrysalides, improvised field devices, or survivalist caches, the works are designed for reintegration into natural landscapes, where they persist in perpetuity. Solar-powered and off-grid, they draw from the aesthetics of data preppers and tactical media, blurring the boundary between organic residue and rogue networked archive.

About the Artist

Christopher Meerdo is an Ohio-based artist, researcher, and educator who grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Šiauliai, Lithuania. His sculptural, image, and film work engages with data archives, computational processes, and digital forensics, incorporating encrypted imagery, leaked documents, synthetic media, and machine-learning techniques.

Meerdo has exhibited internationally at institutions including FOAM Fotographiemuseum Amsterdam, The Renaissance Society (Chicago), the Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art (Pittsburgh), and the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), with time-based work screened on DIS.art and at international film festivals.

He has held residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, the Jan van Eyck Academie, and Cité Internationale des Arts, and is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation award and The Hopper Prize. He is Assistant Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the Visual Arts at The Ohio State University, a joint appointment between the Department of Art and the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD).