<!--AI_Augmented_Iconography--> Statement
AI_Augmented_Iconography is my concept that merges religious iconography with algorithmic language to explore how human identity is altered by technological, ideological, and scientific forces — including algorithms, filters, avatars, emojis, DNA editing, chemical agents designed to enhance human performance, longevity, and beauty. The concept emerged from my lived experience of existential alteration — not a rupture, but an internal shift. A response to change. A reconfiguration of self to absorb a new environment.
Rooted in Orthodox iconography, I adopt sacred visual images— halos, gold leaf, frontal stillness — and disrupt them with code, binary sequences, and emojis. Faith and code become interwoven, forming a new iconography where belief is data and identity is interactive.
Much of my work centers on the human figure — particularly the child — as a contested site of ideological inscription. I return to this image not for sentimentality, but because childhood is where foundational myths are seeded, and where systems of control, care, belief, and conformity often begin. In these fragile forms, I see both exposure and possibility. The child figure in my work becomes a carrier of the broader human condition — a site where societal, technological, and spiritual forces converge.
Materiality is central to my process. I work with ink on clay board and paper, silicone dolls, embroidery, and textiles — materials that ground algorithmic abstraction in human labor.
Embroidery and stitching serve as conceptual tools—emphasizing slow, intentional, human labor in contrast to the automation and acceleration of digital technologies.
By fictionalizing and archiving contemporary digital mythology, my work proposes new ways of understanding our present condition. What does it mean to exist in a system that tracks, categorizes, and monetizes our emotions? How does ideological conditioning manifest through algorithms and corporate influence?
A core ethical question in my practice is how we choose to relate to these AI entities: not only what they do to us, but what we project onto them. I believe AI tools must be approached not only critically but with responsibility and ethical awareness. Just as my artwork blurs the sacred with the synthetic, it also seeks to reframe our engagement with technology—not as submission or rejection, but as a dialogue informed by care, critique, and accountability.
My mission is to challenge the forces that shape human identity and perception in the digital age by creating work that provokes critical reflection on technology, power, and ideology.
For the broader community and society, my motivation is to preserve and amplify the human experience in an increasingly automated world.