Ania Soliman‘s paintings offer dreamlike scenes, fragments of worlds hallucinated by machines. Using artificial intelligence to synthesize historical and pop-cultural images via post-colonial and feminist-queer inputs, the artist explores the technology’s impact on our collective psyche, formulating a new surrealism.
On a conceptual level this project addresses AI’s much-discussed data bias. For example, unless prompted otherwise, images that AI proposes contain only white people. Steered towards a more accurate representation of humanity, such programs often produce ethno-kitsch orientalism. The same can be said for gender-normative representations. This (serious) problem provides an opportunity for re-examining and reconfiguring these usually hidden patterns—to reflect on and illustrate what happens when AI makes images. It also allows us to question the contents and processes of the Internet, which in turn structure our daily life and interiority. Meaning is not derived from machine processes: it must be interpreted, projected, and imagined by us. These works provide some entry points for interpretation and allow us to question this new form of image-making.
