happy/sad/neutral/unknown
(2022 - 2024)
[Back to images]
In happy/sad/neutral/unknown the author probes gaps in memory by linking photographs from the family-archive with the aesthetics of contemporary surveillance. Applying an AI facial‑recognition process to these personal images reveals what the archive omits: emotional nuances, hidden stories, and the distance between lived experience and the pictures that remain. This algorithm first detects faces and then attempts to classify emotion, but it struggles with the materiality of age‑worn photographs. The red squares and the many inaccuracies of the AI open an ambiguous interpretive space between past and present, analogue and digital.
The photographs from the family archive were taken shortly before or during the period when the Colombian State collaborated with paramilitary groups to exterminate members of leftist political parties. On their surface the images register celebrations and family outings, but they give no hint of the fear experienced by the artist’s relatives and acquaintances. The AI’s red markers link those carefree scenes to the political violence that lurked beyond them, while also prompting questions about political repression in our contemporary, digital time. The color red also functions as formal element that alludes to the alleged name of the extermination plan (el baile rojo, the red dance), while also serving as a metaphor for the systematical violence.