Gallery Entry
Ambivalent Mutations
By Patricia Sambo · DK
Ambivalent Mutations is a three-work series in which related biomorphic images carry different histories of making. Presented together as fine-art prints, they initially invite a visual judgement: attraction, discomfort, a sense of growth or exposure. Only afterwards are their production histories disclosed. The first composition begins with my automatic charcoal drawing, made without erasure. The second develops through five documented stages: human, AI, human, AI, human. Drawing becomes a digital image, returns to paper for physical reworking, passes through AI again, and receives a final intervention by my hand. The third transfers image-making to AI within the visual world established by the series. Across these changing methods, folds, cavities and tendrils hover between body and plant. My role shifts from making marks to negotiating transformations and determining how the images are encountered. Human agency remains present in the drawing, the sequence of interventions, and the decision to place these different origins on equal visual terms. The work asks viewers to notice whether knowing an image's origin changes the value they give it. The images remain the same; their interpretation may change. Authorship becomes part of the encounter, alongside the forms themselves.