Theme V: Second Skin

Second Skin explores what happens when analog faces are reimagined by generative AI. Starting from ink and paint, each portrait is then translated by a model that mutates the original into something unfamiliar — part human, part machine, part hallucination.

This series explores the boundary between human gesture and machine interpretation. Each piece begins as a hand-made face — painted or drawn with ink — then reworked by a generative AI model trained to reshape visual information.

The result is a kind of shared authorship. The final images retain traces of the original marks, but they’ve been abstracted, extended, and reimagined by a system I can influence but not fully direct.

These works ask: What happens to identity when it’s filtered through an algorithm? Where does expression end and computation begin? And how much of ourselves do we recognize in a face that’s been remade?

Exploring how identity and expression mutate when passed through systems we can’t fully control.