Echoes of knowledge (A critical interrogation of algorithmic bias), 2025
Video & oil on board
Diptych: 256 seconds, 71,5 cm x 110 cm
Artist’s Statement
Echoes of knowledge is a mixed-media diptych installation staging a critical dialogue between traditional art history and algorithmic bias. Positioning a vertically mounted 4K video screen alongside an appropriated oil painting, the work functions as a living portrait that interrogates how digital datasets accumulate, store, and often omit human knowledge.
The physical component features a thrifted, Renaissance-style portrait of a woman reading, historically a symbol of intellectual labour and accumulated wisdom. I disrupted this original surface by repainting it with short, pointillist strokes to artistically interpret and mimic the diffusion process of contemporary AI generation. By superimposing fluorescent, painted pixel-glitches directly onto the canvas, the physical work represents the intrusion of the post-digital world into traditional frameworks.
In dialogue with the painting, the accompanying video screen actively counters the historical erasure of women. It processes a curated, corrective dataset of marginalised female pioneers in art and technology, ranging from Ada Lovelace to Hilma af Klint. The AI continuously morphs and hallucinates these figures, visually representing the machine’s struggle to retrieve lost female narratives from the biased noise of history. This visual flux is anchored by an uncanny soundscape that merges industrial factory noise with the organic rhythm of human breathing.
Ultimately, by centering the female subject across both physical and digital mediums, this installation serves as a monument to women’s intellectual labour. It challenges the predictive opacity of algorithms and asks a vital question: who is remembered, and who is forgotten, in the contemporary age of Artificial Intelligence?
Stills
