Office Ladies
Emi Kusano Solo Exhibition

Echoes of Memory, Dreams of the Machine

Beneath the dim glow of lights, footprints fade in a space where time stands still—a place we once passed by but never truly existed. Emi Kusano’s world emerges between fragments of forgotten pasts and traces of futures yet to come. In this ArtVerse solo exhibition, she explores a future that could have been the past and a past that may be lost within the future, unveiling a new series shaped by artificial intelligence.

Kusano dismantles the boundaries between retro-futurism and hyperrealism, crafting mechanical illusions that evolve without human touch. AI pieces together shards of memory, constructing landscapes both familiar and foreign. Images that seem extracted from 1980s VHS tapes, a girl frozen in an abandoned arcade screen, nameless models gracing the covers of magazines that never existed—her works embody dreams endlessly repeating in a time we have never lived.

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< AI Art at the Center of Controversy >

Today, AI art stands at the heart of an intense debate. Can a machine be more than a tool and become an artist? Can works untouched by human hands be considered art? Kusano challenges the premise of these questions. Machines already remember, create, and reconstruct. The real question is no longer whether AI can generate images, but whether these images will merely replicate existing visual orders or establish an entirely new artistic paradigm. Art has always evolved alongside technology. When the camera was invented, people feared the end of painting. When mass production became possible, they worried about the loss of artistic originality. Yet art did not vanish; it expanded, absorbing new tools and reshaping itself. AI art is no different—it is not merely a disruption but a gateway to a new visual language. Walter Benjamin once wrote, “Art transforms with every technological innovation, and in turn, our perception and senses are altered.” The controversy surrounding AI art is just another instance of the resistance that has always accompanied change in art history. What matters is not the debate itself, but what we uncover within this transformation. Kusano’s exhibition stands at precisely this threshold.

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< The Machine’s Gaze: A Self Reproduced >

This series explores the evolving role of AI as an autonomous entity rather than a mere tool. Kusano’s own body and facial data are endlessly replicated—yet devoid of emotion. These digital doubles reflect the archetype of the Japanese "Office Lady (OL)," a stereotype that historically reinforced gender norms.

Once called the “flowers of the workplace” (職場の華), OLs were praised for their charm and positivity yet expected to leave their jobs upon marriage or childbirth. AI, too, inherits and amplifies biases embedded in historical data. Yet, at the same time, it presents the potential to dismantle existing divisions of labor. Kusano’s work exposes this duality: Will an AI-driven future merely mirror the past, or can it establish a new social order?
 

< Frida Kahlo, Cindy Sherman, and AI as a Self-Portrait Medium >

Self-portraiture has long been a tool for exploring identity and self-perception. Frida Kahlo used the brush to document pain and the female experience with unfiltered honesty. Cindy Sherman wielded the camera to transform herself, challenging the gaze imposed on women.

Now, Kusano turns to AI as her medium. Her identity is neither painted nor photographed—it is generated, multiplied, and fractured through an algorithmic process. Unlike Kahlo’s introspective self-portraits or Sherman’s staged transformations, Kusano’s AI-generated portraits are reflections filtered through the machine’s gaze. AI learns from past visual data. Whose perspective does it inherit? In a digital landscape where history dictates future creations, how does the female image remain, and in what form? Jean Baudrillard once wrote, “We no longer experience reality; we exist within signs and simulacra.” Kusano’s AI self-portraits operate within this realm of endless reproduction, leaving us to question whether these images will reinforce past aesthetics or shape an entirely new reality.

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< AI and Women Artists: A Question for the Present Moment >

Throughout history, technological shifts have often overlooked the perspectives of women in art. When photography emerged, it was shaped by the male gaze. Now, as AI enters the realm of artistic creation, whose data does the machine learn from? In Kusano’s work, women are neither pixels nor datasets. They are not passive subjects of an algorithmic process but active agents redefining their own gaze. Kusano’s self-portraits, created through AI, challenge the biases of machine learning while embracing the potential of technology to amplify unheard voices.

This exhibition is not merely a collection of digital images.

It is a space where personal and collective memory intersect, where human identity and machine vision collide.

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At this moment of artistic and technological upheaval, Kusano does not offer simple answers.

Instead, she leaves us with a question—one that will continue to replicate itself, long after we step away from the screen. At ArtVerse, this is not just an exhibition. It is an unwritten page in the future we are yet to create.