Here, we ask an artist to frame the essential details behind a recent work.
Bio: Emi Kusano, 35, Tokyo
Title of work: Memory Mandara
Where to see it: “EGO IN THE SHELL: Ghost Interrogation”, Offline Gallery, New York City.
Three words to describe this work:
Ritual — Synthetic — Mandala.
What was on your mind at the time: I wanted to braid Buddhist ideas of the self as kū (emptiness) with our present condition in which AI expands and even fabricates memory. Building a mandala from fragments of my personal archive and their AI reconstructions, I was thinking about how identity dissolves—much like in Ghost in the Shell—between body and data, the real and the simulated.
An interesting feature that’s not immediately noticeable: The radial arrangement interleaves authentic family images with AI-generated “memories that never existed,” so what feels familiar may actually be synthetic; only on closer viewing do you notice the alternating strata of time and fabrication.
How the work reflects your practice as a whole: Memory Mandara condenses my broader practice of fusing nostalgia, Japanese philosophy, and cyberpunk culture with contemporary AI tools—often via CRT-based sculpture and holographic presence—to question how archives, surveillance, and machine learning reshape selfhood.
One song that captures the work’s essence: “傾聴” (Prayer/Patience motif) — Kenji Kawai, “Making of a Cyborg” (from Ghost in the Shell, 1995).
