The series was created by asking the AI tool Chat GPT the question ‘What if Ana Mendieta, who died young, had lived longer?’ was asked by the AI tool Chat GPT.

 

When I was in France two years ago, I drew Louise Bourgeois's face in the dark and went to bed, as the house only had indirect lighting at night. The next morning, when I looked at it in the bright summer light of Europe, it was a completely different picture.

 

But I suddenly remembered that I felt that painting someone's face... someone who is no longer there, is like painting in the dark.

I decided to paint the face of one of my favourite artists, Ana Mendieta, in her old age.

 

During a retrospective exhibition in Japan of her husband Carl Andre, whose connection to her death remains a subject of controversy, the project ‘Where is Ana Mendieta?’ was unaware that the project was taking place. Peaceful protests also took place at the Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art, where Andre's exhibition was held.

 

Maybe this kind of empowerment was mixed in the air and reached me, who was working in a corner of a flat on the edge of Tokyo, far away, and when I was sleeping, I was breathing that air.

 

I didn't know anything, I didn't even know who to talk to, I was talking to AI.

One was ‘Do you know Ana Mendieta?’ The chat started with,

The other was ‘Hello. A chat exchange starting with ‘I am Ana Anamendieta’. This was extracted from her own words from her interview left on YouTube and pretended to be her.

In the chat, I struggle to somehow find out what Ana looks like in her old age. I do not know whether I have succeeded in doing so or not.

 

I will continue to think about Ana, who is no longer with us.