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You Are My Eager Devotion

Ezra Wube

2023 00:06:12 United StatesEnglishColorStereoHD video

Description

Created with artist Jolie Ruelle. 

What is an AI’s understanding of human rights? For this project, AI was used to generate images based on the 30 universal human rights as defined by the United Nations. The collected images were then painted and animated to create a world in which the representations of these rights coexist. The automatic translation of these texts into images creates a pure form of surrealism. The AI is not aware of making the images as it transcribes the collective subconscious into a nonsensical pictorial world, revealing our unfiltered biases, assumptions, and romanticism. The title is extracted from one of the first AI-generated love letters, appearing in a laboratory at the University of Manchester in 1954, typed out one minute per letter.

About Ezra Wube

Ezra Wube (b. 1980, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) is a cross disciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Through autobiography, his work references the notion of past and present, the constant changing of place, and the dialogical tension between "here" and "there". Wube’s exhibitions include the Dak’Art 2014 Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2014); 5TH Marrakech Biennale, Marrakech, Morocco (2014); The 18th International Festival of Contemporary Art SESC_Videobrasil, São Paulo, Brazil (2014); and At the same moment, a Times Square Midnight Moment program, New York, NY (2013). 

Wube’s awards and residencies include Artist in the marketplace, Bronx Museum of the Arts (2014); Swing Space, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, NY (2013);  The Substation, Johannesburg, South Africa (2011); Contemporary Artists Center Woodside, Troy, NY (2011); and Château de la Napoule, France (2011). Wube received his BFA (2004) from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA) and an MFA (2009) from Hunter College, New York, NY.