LINDA DOUNIA (B. 1994)
14° 40′ 34.46″ N 17° 26′ 15.14″ W
archival pigment print on canvas
collage and outputs from LoRA
35 2/5 x 26 1/2 in. (90 x 67.5 cm.)
Executed in 2024

The artist

Blur Theory is a body of work that explores the interplay between personal memory and machine-generated imagery through the lens of Linda Dounia's reflections on her city, Dakar. Each artwork is named after the specific location it investigates and is represented in geographical coordinates.

Recognizing that recollections are inherently subjective and grounded in emotion, Dounia photographs the city while in motion—on foot, by bike, and by car. These images capture physical locations which have meaning for her in a way that suggests the fluid nature of memory itself. In parallel, Dounia prompts popular diffusion models to produce renditions of the same sites, resulting in images that often lack contextual detail or cultural nuance. Dounia then merges these two exposures, the machine-made works with the real photographs, and trains a model on these synthesized images. This process serves as an illustration of the implications of using artificial intelligence as a way of seeing. While AI “imagines” based on vast image datasets, it cannot replicate the sensory depth of lived experience—sight, sound, taste, and smell—so integral to human memory.

Underlying these hybrid works is a broader commentary on how systems of classification and labeling shape what is recorded, recognized, and valued. Just as individual remembrance is partial and ever-evolving, the data used to train AI systems is necessarily incomplete, political, and subjective. Through these composite images, Dounia prompts viewers to question not only the mechanics of memory—human or digital—but also the assumptions underpinning our collective understanding of place and identity, and how we mediate these through AI.