EUPHORSIA: BECOME HUMAN

Sia Akougny-Coud

EUPHORSIA: META/SCAPE is a playful yet critical exploration of simulation, fandom culture, and digital escapism—a performance within a simulation. This installation challenges the blurred boundaries between creator and audience, between reality and virtuality, between the worlds we consume and the ones we construct.

Inspired by Black Mirror and the concept of heterotopia, the work transforms a traditional exhibition space into a hyper-personal, bedroom-like shrine. Posters of my original characters (OCs) line the walls, sci-fi-inspired accessories are scattered like artefacts, and on the projection, I interact with my OCs through The Sims 4. The space becomes a self-contained world—intimate, obsessive, voyeuristic.

But the gaze cuts both ways. While I simulate my OCs, the audience watches me—watching them. This recursive loop of observation turns the installation into an intimate performance of surveillance and self-reflection. It blurs the line between private and public, control and vulnerability. In this space, spectatorship becomes a form of low-key voyeurism—uninvited yet oddly familiar.

That tension—of being seen and not seen, of watching and being watched—mirrors how digital escapism works. Online, we curate ourselves and consume others, seeking connection through screens while slipping further into simulation. META/SCAPE leans into that contradiction: the comfort we find in artificial intimacy, and the quiet alienation that often comes with it.

By layering fan culture, identity, control, and the politics of observation, META/SCAPE invites viewers to ask: Are we the player, the character, or the code? And in a world mediated by screens, how much of our self is already simulated?

Sia Akougny-Coud is a London-based interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores the intersections of identity, fandom, digital escapism, world-building, and speculative spaces through installation, simulation, and storytelling.

Often using games like The Sims 4 and her original characters, she creates intimate, immersive environments that blur the lines between fiction and reality.

Her ongoing project EUPHORSIA acts as a conceptual world for exploring selfhood, hyper-intimate environments, and escapism. Rooted in pop culture, visual novels, and the psychology of storytelling, Sia’s work navigates how we build meaning through imagined worlds—and how those worlds, in turn, shape us.

The Lab

The Lab

Malakai's shrine

Malakai's shrine

Akari's corner

Akari's corner

Jeremiah's sanctuary

Jeremiah's sanctuary

meta/scape

meta/scape

Gemini Rights (digital poster)

Gemini Rights (digital poster)