Yucef Merhi
Yucef Merhi is an artist, coder, researcher, and curator, based in Miami. He is a pioneer of Digital Art, and is known for exhibiting the first work of art that included a video game console, the Atari 2600. Since 1985, Merhi has produced a wide body of works that engage poetry, facial recognition, AI, VR and retro video game platforms, towards the formulation of interactive linguistic environments that can be experienced in a variety of ways.
His career encompasses a world wide exhibition record in museums, galleries and public spaces of the US, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, England, Holland, Norway, Slovenia, Croatia, Turkey, and Korea. He has received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in Digital/Electronic Art, the 2018-19 CIFO Grant for Mid-Career artist, and the second prize of the 30th Ljubljana Biennial, as well as commissions and residencies from institutions, such as the Orange County Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Bronx Museum of the Arts.
He holds a Master's from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and has lectured at numerous conferences and universities for the past 25 years, including: ACM-MM, SIGGRAPH, Creative Time Summit, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, New York University, The New School, Pratt Institute, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, California Arts Institute, Universidad de Los Andes, and Universidad del Azuay, among others.
Currently, Mr. Merhi serves as a Curator of Digital Collections at The Wolfsonian—Florida International University. Prior to joining The Wolfsonian, Merhi worked at Columbia University and curated exhibitions for MOCA (Los Angeles), The Americas Society (New York), the Esther Klein Art Gallery / Science Center (Philadelphia), and WhiteBox (New York). He also co-founded the International Biennial of Contemporary Art (Mérida, Venezuela), Fundación Canal - Proyecto de Producción Cultural (Caracas, Venezuela), and juried the ACM Multimedia Interactive Art Program in Florence and Beijing.