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In this episode of Unlocked, we speak with Elena Carbajal from Onkaos (Solo Contemporary) in Madrid, a platform working at the intersection of digital art, AI, and research. With a background in philosophy and media theory, she shares how she entered the digital art ecosystem and what it means to support artists working with code and generative systems. We discuss why digital art cannot simply replicate traditional gallery models, the challenge of exhibiting code-based works in physical spaces, and the urgency of building new protocols for production, collecting, and conservation. Elena also introduces the Solo AI Award and Onkaos’ role in connecting art, research, and digital culture.
The traditional gallery model was not designed for digital art - it was designed for objects that could be hung on walls, stored in conditions, and moved through auction houses with established precedent. Elena Carbajal is building the protocols that digital art actually needs: at Onkaos (Solo Contemporary) in Madrid, through the Solo AI Award, and through curatorial practice grounded in philosophy and media theory.
Elena Carbajal is the director of Onkaos, the digital art and AI programme at Solo Contemporary in Madrid, one of Spain's most significant contemporary art institutions. Her background in philosophy and media theory informs a curatorial practice that takes the institutional questions seriously: how do you exhibit digital art, price it, store it, transfer it, and contextualise it within a history that the existing gallery infrastructure wasn't built to handle? She is also the founder of the Solo AI Award, one of the most significant dedicated recognitions for AI art in the Spanish-speaking world.
The protocols that digital art needs - for exhibition, for pricing, for preservation, for institutional legitimacy - don't yet fully exist, and the people building them are doing so without precedent. Elena Carbajal is one of those people, and her work at Onkaos is the most ambitious attempt in Spain to figure out what they should look like. This conversation explores how philosophy and media theory provide frameworks for questions that market logic alone can't answer - and what the Solo AI Award reveals about the state of AI art in the Spanish-speaking world.
Onkaos and institutional digital art
Building a dedicated digital art and AI programme inside a major contemporary art institution is an argument that digital art belongs there - not in a separate space but in the same curatorial conversation as painting, sculpture, and photography. Carbajal is making that argument from inside the institution.
Philosophy and media theory as curatorial tools
The questions digital art raises - about authorship, about originality, about the relationship between tool and artist - are not new. They have been debated in philosophy and media theory for decades, and those debates provide frameworks that market thinking doesn't. Carbajal's background gives her access to those frameworks.
Digital art and the limits of traditional gallery models
The traditional gallery model presupposes that art can be hung, stored, and moved in ways that many digital works can't. Building the protocols that actually suit digital art requires starting from the work's actual requirements rather than adapting existing infrastructure.
The Solo AI Award
A dedicated award for AI art creates visibility and legitimacy for a category that still lacks both in most institutional contexts. The Solo AI Award is infrastructure as much as recognition.
The institutional frameworks for digital art collecting are still being built, and the decisions being made now will shape how the field operates for decades. Elena Carbajal is making some of those decisions at one of Spain's most significant institutions. Understanding her thinking - especially the philosophical frameworks she brings to the questions of exhibition, pricing, and legitimacy - will give collectors better tools for their own decisions.
Unlocked is the podcast by 100 collectors - the global network for digital art collectors. Each episode, we speak with artists, curators, collectors, and builders shaping the digital art world. No market speculation. No hype. Just honest, substantive conversations about art, practice, and what it means to collect today. New episodes release throughout the year. Find Unlocked on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 100 collectors is a membership network. [Explore membership →]
