Oriate Bocu (interdisciplinary installation )

This project delves into the realm of artificial intelligence facial recognition algorithms and their historical connections to scientific racism. Through creating portraits of black individuals who have been unjustly criminalized, I intertwine them with the aesthetics of scientific graphics transformed into Yoruba religious firmas (signs). The objective of this project is to shed light on the enduring continuities, both historical and geographical, within surveillance technologies that disproportionately criminalize black individuals across the African diaspora. Simultaneously, I aim to undermine the scientific authority of new technologies that, once again, attempt to unjustly link physical appearance to human behavior through racist lenses.

By reclaiming the memory of ancestors who were falsely labeled as "sorcerers" (brujos), I pay symbolic homage to them, employing the same cultural codes that were historically used to criminalize them. Through this approach, I seek to challenge and dismantle the stigmatization imposed by colonizers, returning from the realm of science to the realm of "witchcraft" as a means to recognize and empower the profound knowledge and resilience of black individuals.

2019-present…