Ancestral Seeds

Generative images and videos trained on the Salaf dataset

(using StyleGAN3).

Each seed reveals subtle traces of an orientalist presence—drawn from an intentionally erased dataset. The white figures serve as haunting reminders of old biases, and cultural gaps embedded in our digital landscape.

In Ancestral Seeds, the viewer encounters an empty figure—Middle Eastern silhouette echoing the subjects in colonial photography. Yet the expected stereotypes and visual details are missing. By omitting stereotypical features, the work opens a discursive space for viewers to engage with absence as a site of resistance and reinterpretation