Zizi - Queering the Dataset (07)

JAKE ELWES (B. 1993)
Zizi - Queering the Dataset (07)
digital video on custom LED screen
19 3/4 x 19 3/4 in (50 x 50cm)
single-channel video
2:15:00 loop
Executed in 2019

Gazelli Art House, London, 2025

Brühl, Germany, Max Ernst Museum, Surreal Futures, 2024
Munich, Germany, Pinakothek der Moderne, Glitch. Die Kunst Der Störung, 2023
London, UK, Gazelli Art House, Jake Elwes: Data • Glitch • Utopia (solo show), 2023
London, UK, Gazelli Art House, Zizi - Queering the Dataset (solo display), 2022
London, UK, Electrowerkz, Riposte - Queer Art Techno Rave, 2022
Copenhagen, Denmark, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, UKINTER:ACTIVE - Breaking The Code CPH:DOX, 2022
London, UK, Somerset House, The Horror Show! A Twisted Tale Of Modern Britain, 2022
London, UK, Gazelli Art House, Zizi - Queering the Dataset, 2021
London, UK, Zabludowicz Collection, Among the Machines, 2021
Dublin, Ireland, Science Gallery Dublin, BIAS, 2021
Rome, Italy, Gazometro, Onassis Foundation and Future Everything, You and AI (touring), 2020
Cambridge, UK, Center for the Future of Intelligence, Critical Borders: Radical (Re)visions of AI, 2020
Athens, Greece, Pedion tou Areos Park, Onassis Foundation, You and AI, 2020
Pforzheim, Germany, A.K.T, The Third Gender, 2020
Edinburgh, UK, Inspace Gallery, PRETERNATURAL: Jake Elwes (solo show), Data Lates, 2019
London, UK, Arebyte Gallery, Real-Time Constraints (virtual browser extension, COVID-19), 2019
Freiburg, Germany, E-WERK, Fluid Bodies, 2019

In Zizi – Queering the Dataset 07 (2019), being shown in America for the first time, Jake Elwes addresses the lack of diversity and representation in the training datasets commonly used in facial recognition systems. The video shows the result of disrupting these systems by re-training them with drag and gender-fluid faces the artist sourced online. In doing so, the neural network is broadened out from the normative identities it was originally trained to recognise, moving instead into a realm of queerness. The work offers a glimpse inside the machine learning process, visualising what the network has—and hasn’t—learned. It celebrates ambiguity and difference, encouraging reflection on the pervasive biases in our data-driven society.

This video forms part of The Zizi Project (2019–ongoing), a series of works that explore the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and drag performance. Drag, with its challenge to traditional notions of gender and identity, contrasts with AI, often mystified and complicit in perpetuating social biases. Elwes unites these themes through the production of deepfake synthesised drag identities created with machine learning. The project investigates how AI can learn from drag and how drag can, in turn, critique AI. Originally commissioned as a seven-channel video installation by Experiential AI at Edinburgh Futures Institute and Inspace, The University of Edinburgh, Zizi – Queering the Dataset stands as a thought-provoking exploration of AI, identity, and representation. A further iteration of the project, The Zizi Show, was commissioned in 2023 by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, supported by the Manitou Fund. This groundbreaking deepfake drag cabaret, which explores ethical dilemmas within AI, was acquired for the museum’s permanent collection.

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