Trained Histories
Minne Atairu, Michael Borowski, Jim Naughten, and Phillip Toledano
February 7-April 15, 2025
Opening Reception: February 7, 6-9pm
Free and open to the public
Aurora PhotoCenter, Main Gallery
1125 Brookside Avenue, Suite C9, Indianapolis
Photography has long been celebrated as a medium of documentation, memory, and proof, with the camera as witness to moments that shape collective and personal histories. Artificial intelligence has profoundly challenged the boundaries and perception of photography. The exhibition Trained Histories, with work by Minne Atairu, Michael Borowski, Jim Naughten, and Phillip Toledano, invites viewers to consider the intersection of history with ai, exploring how ai can investigate, give visibility to, and reimagine various histories while questioning the very nature of truth in photography.
Ai has introduced a revolutionary way of creating images — through aggregation, algorithms, and data rather than light and lens. These images often mimic the aesthetic of traditional photography, yet they are untethered from the physical reality historically associated with the medium. By using AI to to reinterpret historical narratives, artists can use the technology to open up new dialogues about the stories we tell, the perspectives we privilege, and the silences we perpetuate.
Minne Atairu’s series, AI-Restored Benin Bronzes, tells of the theft of the bronzes, their histories interrupted; the artist then uses ai to fill in the gaps of the visual record, metaphorically suggesting a time when repatriation of the bronzes will unite these important works with their perfected future. In The Wooden Beaver Archive, Michael Borowski gives form to the missing history of mineral springs and urban bath houses as sites for queer desire, using ai to underscore the power of representation. Jim Naughten’s series Caledonia combines original photography and ai to picture animals that once roamed the Scottish Highlands but have since gone extinct, drawing urgent attention to our world’s disappearing biodiversity by showing what we’ve lost. We Are at War, by Phillip Toledano, imagines one of Robert Capa’s lost rolls of film from D-Day, demonstrating how convincing invented history can be, with deep implications for influencing the present and future.
Through the reconstruction or imaginative creation of moments absent from photographic records, ai-generated imagery can fill gaps left by erasure, exclusion, or loss. These visualizations not only confront us with alternative perspectives but also ask us to grapple with the ramifications of "creating" history rather than simply uncovering it.
Minne Atairu is an interdisciplinary artist and doctoral student in the Art and Art Education program at Teachers College of Columbia University. Minne's research emerges at the intersection of machine learning, art education and hip-hop pedagogy. Through the use of Artificial Intelligence (StyleGAN, GPT-3), Minne recombines historical fragments, sculptures, texts, images, and sounds to generate synthetic Benin Bronzes which often hinge on questions of repatriation and post-repatriation.
Michael Borowski lives and works in occupied Tutelo/Moneton land (Blacksburg, Virginia). He works with an expanded photographic practice to critically engage with architecture, technology, and the environment. Construction and fabrication are recurring metaphors in his work, which inhabits an ambiguous space between truth and fiction.
Jim Naughten works with photography, painting, and digital processes to explore historical, environmental, and biodiversity themes, frequently working with museum collections.
Phillip Toledano considers himself a conceptual artist: Everything starts with an idea, and the idea determines the execution. Consequently, his work varies in medium, ranging from photography to installation, sculpture, painting and video.
Annual operating support for Aurora PhotoCenter provided by the City of Indianapolis through the Indy Arts Council. Additional support provided by the Efroymson Family Fund and Joy of Giving Something Foundation.