FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT (2022) by North American artist Maya Man is presented daily on the media wall at arebyte Digital Art Centre, in dialogue with Ambie Drew’s Soft Bodies, Cold Machines exhibition.

This generative artwork draws on the aesthetics and language of the ‘Girl Power’ and ‘Girl Boss’ spheres of the internet. Built in JavaScript, the work reproduces text-driven Instagram graphics as a means of unpacking the visual culture and rhetoric surrounding online wellness, self-care, confidence, and success.

The work’s custom coded algorithm remixes words into new phrases, utilising an archive manually compiled by the artist from graphics circulating on Instagram. The database comprises 250 phrase structures, alongside 145 nouns, 194 adjectives, and 213 adverbs; from which the system generates new compositions, amounting to over 80 billion possible configurations. While the resulting graphics echo the familiar, upbeat tone of their source material, their recombination exposes the clichés and underlying absurdity of this genre.

Maya Man is the first artist in the Media Wall Programme, which turns arebyte’s Digital Art Centre window into a rolling exhibition. Over eight months, a new artist each month presents video works responding to arebyte’s 2026/28 programme REBOOT: Recoding Reality.

After the first selection, each invited artist nominates a second, forming a series of pairs that unfold across the programme. As it develops, the window becomes both an exhibition and a dialogue with passers-by.

Daily Display
17 Apr - 2 Aug 2026
2:00-2:20pm |6:00-7:00 pm

Launch Event
Thu 16 Apr 2026 |6:30-8:30 pm

Maya Man in conversation
with Pita Arreola
Online Event, Wed 8 Jul 2026 | 7pm

ARTIST BIO

Maya Man (b. 1996) is an artist focused on contemporary identity culture on the internet. Her websites, generative series, and installations examine dominant narratives around femininity, authenticity, and the performance of self online. She has exhibited internationally at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; bitforms, NYC; SOOT, Tokyo; Verse, London; House of Electronic Arts (HeK), Basel; and the online platform Feral File. She has been invited to speak on her work at The New Museum, NYC; The V&A and Tate Britain, London; and MOCA, Los Angeles. Maya organises a curatorial project called HEART, previously run out of her studio in SoHo, NYC.