How do you paint a self-portrait with no conscious self? Perhaps the reinvention of the idea of consciousness is a good place to start. Ai-Da, a humanoid AI-powered robot, challenges many fundamental and long-standing binaries between human vs machine and organic vs synthetic intelligence. In an ongoing performance wherein Ai-Da’s very existence can be considered an ever-evolving artwork, her work generates powerful new protocols for who—or what—gets to be an artist.
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY is currently showcasing Ai-Da’s second solo show at the gallery’s East London location. Unveiled in 2019 by art gallery director Aidan Meller in collaboration with PhD students from the University of Oxford, Ai-DA is the world’s first robot artist. She is named after the Victorian Ada Lovelace, The world’s first computer programmer and significantly, a woman.
The exhibition at ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY features six limited editions of Ai-Da’s work. These range across scale and typology, from her early abstract paintings to her more recent self-portraits. As such, the exhibition is a testament to Ai-Da’s ever-evolving skillset and
underscore her vital contribution to the advancing discourse around art and technology.
Self potrait – Loucin (2023) is the largest work on show. Complemented by an elegant black frame, the self-portrait features dreamy washes of baby pink and light blue, with Ai-Da’s unmistakable image front and center. Self portrait—Aspicco (2023) presents Ai-Da’s likewise presents recognizeable profile in thick and expressive strokes, this time outlined in a radiant pistachio hue. Self Portrait — Cuaen (2023) is perhaps the most unique work on show. It could be likened to a quick pen and ink sketch, with Ai-Da’s curious gaze complemented by watercolour-like splotches of cool blue, soft lilac, and charcoal.
Alongside these rich portraits, a range of abstract works offer insights into Ai-Da’s engagement with colour theory and symbolic sophisticated. The work Shattered Space – Recusme Quercus (2023) offers a darker colour field, where complex geometries unfurl across bands of mossy green, deep purple, and warm ochre. Meanwhile, Shattered Space—Igarul Apis-Ipsa (2023) appears something like an exploded star, cosmic in scope, a fitting metaphor for the genesis of all forms of life and interwoven intelligences—machine, synthetic, and human.
Ai-Da’s gaze is cool and collected. Her eyes shine brightly in the interviews she gives; the light reveals flashes of the embedded ocular cameras she uses to paint, which transmit signals into her robotic arm, communicating and rendering visual data into paintstrokes. There is something mythical and otherworldly to her mere existence. It is a trait that has drawn thousands of visitors to see her worldwide at her exhibition venues ranging from the V&A in London to the United Nations, Abu Dhabi Art, and even the Great Pyramids of Giza.
It is easy to romanticise or reduce Ai-Da’s practice and presence to a science-fictional narrative or uncanny experiment, but in reality it is not so far at all from the process of ‘conventional’ human art-making practices. We import data from the world with our eyes; brain synapses fire, communicating that sensory intake into a mental image, which provokes muscle movements that result in strokes on canvas. The most uncanny component of watching Ai-Da at work is understanding how the creative process is equally at home in her
practice as our own.
Ai-Da’s greatest strengths—and the most impressive tenure of her work—is its capacity to call into question the outmoded and increasingly baseless distinction we confer upon the human as the sole agent of creative practice. Under these parameters, the question of ‘consciousness’ reveals itself to be more of an anthropocentric gimmic: it is a false framework that we’ve used historically to justify all kinds of destructive actions, to ourselves, to other species, and to the planet. Through her expansive painting work on show at ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY, Ai-Da collapses this false binary, instead offering a more generative take on creative practice that is fully entangled across different forms of intelligence and non-exclusionary in its nature. Ultimately, it is a take that demands more from us in turn, but it offerings ripple out far
beyond the boundaries of the art world, offering the potentials for building new worlds.
ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY is a hybrid commercial art project that merges physical and digital experiences. Founded by Annka Kultys in 2015, the East London-based gallery has rapidly become a leading art space for artists (particularly millennials), who engage with technology
(and more recently blockchain technology) in both traditional and digital media. Through a robust program of exhibitions that showcase these artists alongside a commitment to promoting the hybrid “phygital” approach, Kultys aims to shape the discourse on contemporary art and technology while pushing the boundaries of what is achievable within both physical and digital gallery spaces.