This series originates from an early AI portrait system that iteratively projected arbitrary images—sometimes non-figurative objects—onto the visual language of Renaissance portraiture. Through a small number of by-purpose interrupted, nested transformations, the system collapsed noise into symmetry, texture into flesh, and ambiguity into a face. The process did not preserve identity; it erased it, converging instead on a historically conditioned ideal.

The resulting images were used as the basis for this ink-drawings series. By translating algorithmic outcomes back into hand-drawn form, the work reverses the direction of generation: from computational certainty to human gesture. Line, hesitation, and omission re-enter where the system had already resolved form. In Post-Covid Series I treat AI as a sculptural tool rather than a creative partner—an instrument that removes variance until a culturally inherited image remains. In pandemic isolation,  AI recursively projected identity onto cultural ideals, turning every image into a destabilized self-portrait.