Avatar Reveal: The Self-Portrait in the Age of Artificial Identity

Since the earliest days of the digital revolution, the timeless human impulse for self-representation — once embodied in painted self-portraits — has taken on new, democratized forms. In the era of the first text-based web, usernames became the first creative extensions of identity: chosen names through which users could invent, conceal, or reinvent themselves.

With the rise of social media and its demand for authenticity, this dynamic shifted. Users were encouraged to remove their masks and present their “true” selves through selfies and personal images. Yet this transparency was short-lived. The emergence of Instagram filters returned the mask to the user — not as concealment, but as transformation: a tool to reshape appearance, mood, and identity at will.

Video games expanded this process even further. Avatar creation engines introduced sophisticated systems of customization, allowing users to construct hybrid identities that exist between the material and the artificial. These avatars became experimental spaces — laboratories for the self — where individuals could express not only their physical likeness, but also their aspirations, fantasies, and alternate versions of who they might become.

Across all these stages, a recurring tension emerges: a pendulum oscillating between revelation and concealment, between the portrait and the mask. Today, this tension is intensified by new technological realities. On one hand, the widespread circulation of images and the rise of biometric surveillance raise urgent questions about privacy, ownership, and control over our likeness. On the other, AI-generated imagery opens unprecedented creative possibilities, allowing individuals to generate versions of themselves that transcend physical and temporal limitations.

In this new context, the self-portrait enters a transformative phase. When artists collaborate with artificial intelligence, authorship becomes shared, and the image exists simultaneously as portrait, projection, and construction. The self-portrait is no longer a fixed representation, but an evolving negotiation between human intention and machine interpretation.

Using the metaphor of the video game avatar creation engine, this exhibition explores emerging parameters of self-representation. The participating artists were invited to engage AI as a creative partner and to construct avatars of themselves — not as literal likenesses, but as expanded identities. These works reflect new ways of seeing and inventing the self in an era where identity is fluid, programmable, and continuously reimagined.

Featuring works by Murakit, César Augusto Ramírez, Alexandr Sokolov, Darya Abdullina, Juan Benitez, Miguel Ángel Polick, Tsvelyy Soup, Gibran Mendoza, Martín Tokeshi, Didzayberpvnk, Clutch, Leonardo Ascencio, Johan Samboni, Nohygiene, Anthony Robinson, Tajinder Dhami, Nasrah Omar, Plastic Girl, Noistruct, MlkBrutal, Daisiesgrowfast, Anna Morozova, Ivan Kalinichev, Alexander Krylov, Abram Dikoi, Kaysar Salykov, Yanis Proshkinas, JeWon Yoon, Jeon Song, Boloto, AXIMM, Nawin Nuthong, Anu Naran, Kasser Sánchez, Pengpeng Wang, and Kaoru Shibuta.

Embassy at Linda de la Art Center & TheWrong

Curated by Alfredo Arévalo х Open Call Finder