Reimagining Algorithms: Cultural Heritage in the Age of AI
- myglendale
- Jun 26
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 3
August 16 - November 2, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 16, 2025, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Reimagining Algorithms: Cultural Heritage in the Age of AI at ReflectSpace was an art-infused, researched-based and technologically adventurous exhibition that highlighted how artists re-imagine and re-invent culture while also casting light on how the same technology is used for its destruction. Embedded in diverse cultural and historical narratives, the artists employed varied media and processes to rethink and recreate their culture through technology. In parallel, researchers and cultural workers delved into ways technology is employed to erase the art and culture of indigenous and colonized communities. The exhibit brought these two seemingly opposing polarities into proximity and questioned their implications on our use of technology and AI (Artificial Intelligence) on cultural memory and identity.
Featured artists included Kamee Abrahamian, Gabbah Baya, Yrneh Gabon, Mashinka Firunts Hakopian (with Atlas Acopian and Lara Sarkissian), and Korea-based artists Sung Min Jang, Seung Jun Seo (with Woo Seok Son), and XYZ (In Sang Kwak, Ji Hyun Seo, Soo In Cho). The work of these artists extended to the PassageWay where the exhibition expanded through the research and documentation done by Simon Maghakyan and the Caucasus Heritage Watch of current efforts to destroy cultural heritage in Artsakh/Nagorno Karabagh and the Gaza Strip.
Collectively, the artists, researchers and cultural workers in Reimagining Algorithms wove a tapestry of work that re-creates culture with new technological imaginings while also recognizing how systems can harness its algorithmic violence.
Reimagining Algorithms: Cultural Heritage in the Age of AI was curated by Ara & Anahid Oshagan and Monica Hye Yeon Jun.
Supported by:
International Association for the Art Ecosystem (IAAE)
CultureNomad
Featured Artists and Researchers:
Click on the arrow next to a name to learn more about an artist/researcher.
Kamee Abrahamian
Using digital technology, Kamee Abrahamian’s Flesh, Immemorial reimagines a kind of return or reunion of descendants of communities who have been deracinated from their indigenous lands. As a creative experiment of “kaleidoscopic super(im)position”, Western Armenians—exiled from their lands by genocide—are placed onto their landscapes of origin, re-creating a new relationship to their ancestral land, flora, fauna stories and spirits. The project explores diasporic futurism and the reclamation of land, belonging, and autonomy through collaborative practices offering healing for those navigating displacement and intergenerational trauma.
Gabbah Baya
Game designer and artist Gabbah Baya participates with Pomegranates—a narrative-driven game that is set in a future Gaza memorializing the lives of Palestinians lost since October 7, 2023. Palestinian stories are told that are centered on hopes and dreams rather than loss. Through 3-D modeling and digital archiving, they also reconstruct destroyed landmarks, allowing players to explore spaces that once held cultural and personal significance. Pomegranates invites players to engage with Palestinian history, loss, and resilience emphasizing how memory and the past shape our collective future.
Yrneh Gabon
Yrneh Gabon, an LA-based Jamaican artist, will create a unique installation for the exhibition using dragonfly imagery and related artworks. Dragonflies are symbols of ecological fragility and resilience, first appearing in his art during California’s 2016 drought. They also symbolize mutability and resilience: delicate life forms navigating environmental stress, mirroring human survival in challenging conditions. Often integrated into his textiles and mixed-media works, dragonflies link Brown’s environmental concerns with his cultural identity and speak to processes to re-imagine and uphold culture.
Mashinka Firunts Hakopian with Atlas Acopian and Lara Sarkissian
Mashinka Firunts Hakopian with Atlas Acopian and Lara Sarkissian reimagine ancestral practices with Բաժակ Նայող (One Who Looks at the Cup): a bilingual AI project that performs Armenian and English coffee readings using a community-generated dataset. Rooted in SWANA divination traditions, it incorporates oral histories, images, and texts—especially from diasporic and feminist sources—to explore collective future-making. By challenging algolinguicism (linguistic discrimination driven by technology and algorithms) and centering non-dominant languages, the project reclaims digital authorship through intuitive, embodied, and ancestral knowledge. A short film documents this process through six predictive coffee reading vignettes.
Simon Maghakyan & Caucasus Heritage Watch
Simon Maghakyan is a researcher and scholar who studies cultural destruction in conflict zones. His work combined with the Caucasus Heritage Watch based at Cornell University and led by Lori Khatchadourian, highlights the destruction of cultural heritage taking place currently in the occupied Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh region. Their work expands and extends the exhibition into the PassageWay.
Sung Min Jang, Seung Jun Seo (with Woo Seok Son), and XYZ (In Sang Kwak, Ji Hyun Seo, Soo In Cho)
Three Korea-based artists and their collaborators participate with video and installation work. Sung Min Jang, Seung Jun Seo (with Woo Seok Son), and XYZ (In Sang Kwak, Ji Hyun Seo, Soo In Cho) address Japanese colonial history and the undiminished effects of sexual enslavement of “Comfort Women” from World War II—a state-sponsored act of violence yet to be fully recognized by Japan. The first monument dedicated to comfort women in the US stands near the entrance to Glendale’s Central Library. These artists reflect on this history and the cultural destruction and human devastation it has wrought.
Accompanying Book List
Further exploring the duality of technological power and themes of cultural resilience in the face of erasure, this list offers perspectives on technology and stories of resistance from Palestine, Armenia, and Korea.
ReflectSpace
Glendale Central Library
222 East Harvard Street
Glendale, CA 91205
3 free hours of parking is available with validation at the Marketplace parking structure across the street from the Harvard Street entrance. Accessible parking is available on the east side of the building. View the Visit page for public transit information and open hours.