Connie Bakshi
My silence would be as stone, 2023
Virtual installation: HD Video (40 second loop), PNG image, 3D sculpture

‘For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures…’
— Audre Lorde, A Litany for Survival

Inspired by Audre Lorde’s ‘A Litany for Survival’, My silence would be as stone envisions the invisible hopes and fears across the colonial history and generations of the artist’s lineage, calling upon the petition-and-response structure of the litany as both a recursive process and manifold introspection within AI conversational and image synthesis models.

As a triptych, the piece manifests the ritual practice of silent prayer between object, environment, and repetition — revealing the envelopes of identity that would not diminish but be amplified by context, the physical tension between what is expressed and what is withheld, and the temporal boundary where the voices of the past would echo those of the present in an unspoken dream of self-sovereignty.

Connie Bakshi is an artist based in Los Angeles. Working predominantly with artificial intelligence, she probes postcolonial narratives that emerge on the boundaries between the synthetic and organic, material and immaterial, the human and nonhuman. Her works often re-code language, lore, and ritual to invoke the unspoken memories and desires of a collective consciousness.

Her accolades include the Red Dot: Best of the Best Award for Concept Design and the International Takifuji Arts Award. She has spoken and exhibited in FEMGEN at Art Basel Miami, VellumLA, MoCDA, NFCastle, The NFT Gallery in London, and SaloneSatellite in Milan. An alumna of NEW INC, the New Museum’s incubator for art, technology, and design, she is currently a resident artist at the VerticalCrypto Art Residency.

Connie is descended from the ancestral shamans of Taiwan.

EPOCH presents, XENOSPACE, a ground-breaking and experimental virtual exhibition that features seven artists exploring the collaborative boundaries between AI and machine learning within their creative processes.

The title “XENOSPACE” alludes to an unusual or unfamiliar environment. EPOCH has processed 360 equirectangular panoramas through Stable Diffusion, generating the subsequent AI-assisted environments that serve as the backdrop for the artworks.

XENOSPACE responds to a significant moment in the field, as it reflects on the growing relationship between humans and machines and the impact of AI on creative expression. The exhibition serves as a benchmark, showcasing the expansive collaborative potential of AI and machine learning in contemporary art practices and exhibition building. – chatGPT