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Aarati Akkapeddi will present the work that they’ve developed during their residency at Ada X. Using their family archives as training data for Generative Adversarial Networks, Akkapeddi produced a series of image and video-based work, conveying the fluidity of collective and personal memory. The presentation will be followed by a conversation with Angelina Ruiz.
“Aarati Akkapeddi invites us to be a part of their ancestry, as they present past memories in a new world. Akkapeddi’s work surrounds the training of data to recognize a subset of faces, more specifically the artists’ own family, and in turn regenerates new imagery. Combining new technological practices with the outdated, Akkapeddi employs a large archive of digitized Kodachrome slides and negatives, which now live in a new digital realm.
The work in its entirety is a slow burn of nostalgia, as the data begins to copy endlessly, creating decaying memories before the viewer’s eyes. The project is a revival; each image is different, but somehow still similar. The new ones live in their own haunting world, as if they were figments of themselves. One can feel so close to them, as if we once knew them but can’t recall, like waking from a dream that slowly begins to fade. Akkapeddi says, “I feel that the intangibility of the archive can speak to more than just a loss of memory: it can also offer the opportunity to dream possibilities and parallels.” — Angelina Ruiz
Aarati Akkapeddi is an Telugu-American cross-disciplinary artist based in New York City. They utilize archives to explore how identities and histories are shaped by different methods of collecting data.
Angelina Ruiz is Nuyorican artist, writer, and activist making work centering familial bonds, gentrification, and Puerto Rican diaspora.
