“We Exist”
I am a papermaker and photographer. My artistic practice is inspired by my concerns about our natural environment as well as my love of the processes and materials available when I combine photographic images and handmade papers. The ethnographic study of Ghanaian immigrants made me interested in recreating their portraits using photography as the medium. This led me to realize that artificial intelligence has the ability to recreate paintings, photographs into new forms. My collaboration with Sheriff Mohammed Issaka, a computer science student, has resulted in a series of portraits of the Ghanaian community who are facing immigration issues. For security reasons, these reproductions are figures that don’t exist, but have DNA that matches the original photos.
In my work as a paper producer, the images are developed on papers made with textile materials collected from immigrants. These textile materials hold the history of these individuals and are conceptually a good option to tell their stories. Aliens are classified as non-citizens and this is depicted artistically through color photographs. The viewer can become aware of how identities are mostly created by circumstance through observing the details of the portraits.