Looking for Adonis (2023)
Single-channel video, wall posters, recording in Shoreditch, London
25 mins 20 seconds
Looking for Adonis begins with the artist’s own portrait, which is repeatedly generated, substituted and reconfigured through AI. As the image undergoes continual transformation, the facial features that once pointed to a specific individual gradually become less distinct. The portrait shifts from representing a person towards becoming an image that remains in a constant state of formation.
The work adopts the visual language of missing-person posters, where the same face recurs in subtly different forms. Repetition does not produce sameness; instead, each iteration introduces difference. Every portrait remains close to its point of origin, yet none returns to it completely. Viewers are therefore drawn into a continual oscillation between recognition and misrecognition, where identity is experienced not as a fixed attribute but as something repeatedly organised, revised and redefined.
As the work unfolds, attention shifts from the portrait itself to the processes through which images participate in the production of identity. The portrait no longer functions simply as a record of an individual; it becomes a technical interface through which identities are rendered recognisable, classified and circulated. As images increasingly precede the subjects they appear to represent, identity itself emerges as something continuously produced, negotiated and transformed.