Achievement, Installation with Ai generated photos, 2024

The reinvention of memory and the critical engagement with archives are central to Delahante Matienzo’s research and a strategy that lets her recover the identities and legacies of people who were denied the right to record their own histories. As a Cuban-born artist with African and Chinese roots, she knows from her own family’s experience that, for the longest time, oral traditions were the only available sources on which to draw for one’s lineage and heritage.

In Achievements, she presents a fictional and speculative archive that features Black women as prominent, affluent, and esteemed members of society and as hardworking and selfdetermined businesswomen. In so doing, she not only undertakes a critique of history, she also takes a vital step toward a more nuanced consideration—ultimately, a reprogramming—of beliefs that have seemed impossible to dislodge. Defying the colonial gaze, the artist charts assertive alternative representations. “Black people were not only slaves. They did so many things. I really think that artificial intelligence can fill in the gap and contribute to maybe change people’s mindset, at least a little bit.

” Her use of AI, currently a subject of heated debates, is refreshingly unconstrained by ideological commitments: AI is a tool, an expedient that uncovers potentials. “I think we should create archives for artificial intelligence images in the future. These archives would be compiling photos based on real moments or situations that we know did exist but for whatever reasons no images could be captured. These images recreate something real, a bit like paintings. For instance, you have many historical paintings, from many historical situations and moments, but no photos could be taken. So, I would say that AI generated images are a way of painting with photography, you know?”

Bettina Spörr, curator of Susana's solo exhibition in Secession, Vienna.