UK Government Art Collection Acquires a Keiken Triptych

The artist collective Keiken says two editions of To Touch a Sensitive Soul (2025) have been acquired by the UK Government Art Collection. The work is an embossed fiberglass triptych from Keiken's Future Artefacts series, which grows out of the collective's long-running world-building project Morphogenic Angels, according to the announcement.

The triptych depicts an encounter between hybrid Morphogenic beings who communicate, in Keiken's description, "beyond spoken language, through touch, energy and embodied perception." Its raised surface is meant to be handled as well as seen, a "tactile landscape encountered through the hands." Keiken frames the Future Artefacts as objects that make imagined futures physical: fragments from possible worlds, offered as provocations rather than relics.

Morphogenic Angels imagines post-human bodies 1,000 years from now and has been built largely in game engines, with motion capture and real-time worlds, before spilling out into performance, sound and sculpture. The Government Art Collection holds more than 15,000 works and displays them in British government buildings and embassies in over 125 countries.

The acquisition arrives while Keiken's The Divine Puppeteer, a wearable fiberglass mask with an 11-minute binaural sound journey, is on view at BALTIC in Gateshead through Jan. 17, 2027.

For more reading see Killscreen's report on The Divine Puppeteer at BALTIC, its earlier piece on Morphogenic Angels and post-human bodies, Somerset House's Channel commission page for Morphogenic Angels, and the collection's own explainer, "What is the Government Art Collection?"