Linda Dounia

Senegal

Linda Dounia is a Senegalese-Lebanese experimental artist, designer, writer, and curator who investigates the philosophical and environmental implications of techno-capitalism, and its role in perpetuating systems of inequity. Her practice is an active process for decolonizing her mind and untangling herself from the fragmented and exclusionary narratives associated with her identity, by imagining alternative realities and futures. Inspired by science fiction and speculative design, her work mediates alternative truths and excluded ways of being and doing. It is formed in the liminal space between the immaterial and the material through the combination of analogue and digital mediums – acrylic, ink, pastels, markers, scanners, vector, video, GANs, generative AI, code, and a range of materials not intended for art making.

Linda’s work on speculative archiving earned her a spot on the 2023 TIMEA100 list of the most influential people in AI. In 2024, she received Mozilla’s RISE25 award for her work in AI. Her work has been exhibited at Christie’s, Larsen Warner Gallery, Unit London, Art X Lagos, Partcours, Art Basel (Basel, Miami), The Dakar Biennale, Artsy NFT, Digital Art Fair Asia, and Art Dubai. Most recently, she was featured in prestigious events such as the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris, Le Monde Selon l’IA exhibit at the Jeu de Paume, and Christie’s Augmented Intelligence auction.


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Once Upon A Flower 3

'Once Upon A Flower' is a digital garden born from a collaboration between me and a GAN which debuted at Art X Lagos in November 2022. It is a dystopian projection of a likely outcome of global warming, that depicts a world where humans now have to live with simulated images of plants and flowers, which have all disappeared from the earth. Through collections of AI-assisted photographs of a variety of indigenous flora, native to the Sahel region of West Africa, the installation puts forward the fundamental question: Can our contemplation of art restore our collective ability to introspect on our environment and our sense of responsibility towards preserving it? The installation attempts to answer this through the spectacle of flora as a distant memory, to elicit a longing for what has been lost and hopefully trigger the desire to protect what has survived. I first compiled a list of over 100+ species of flora endemic to the Sahel region and classified as endangered by IUCN's Red List of Endangered Species. I then scoured the web for images of these plants to create the database I would later use in the first round of training. I had come across some of these plants before, but many were new to me. It dawned on me that I might not get to see a majority of these plants in nature within my lifetime given the rate at which wildlife is disappearing from the earth. From this database, I then shortlisted plants that I imagine would fit well together in a garden and used the AI tool DALL.E to generate a large set of variations of each plant. This allowed me to compile a second, more refined, database specifically for this installation which I used to train a GAN. I used the GAN's initial outputs of 8,000 plant images to create animations of individual plants that I then brought together in the final composition.

technique

generative art

format

portrait

duration

02:00

year

2022

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More from Linda Dounia

More on digital art

Generative art
Generative art refers to a way of creating artworks using an autonomous system. In digital art, these are usually generated from code and algorithms created by the artist, often with certain predefined parameters or systems. Although these parameters guide the final outcome of the work, generative art is generally a surprising way to create artworks, as the results are often unexpected and the number of possible outcomes can be infinite.
AI
AI art is a branch of generative art that uses artificial intelligence. Unlike other generative artworks, AI artworks use specific complex algorithms and models derived from machine learning. The most common methods for creating AI art today are GANs (generative adversarial networks) or proprietary prompting platforms such as ChatGPT, Sora, Midjourney, or Dall-e.
3D
3D art uses 3D software such as Blender, Cinema4D, Houdini, or video game software such as Unity to create works of art. In 3D works, artists can either arrange assets (the 'objects' in a 3D artwork or world) that they have created themselves or purchased from other creators to create elaborate environments and scenes (an approach to 3D art called 'set dressing'), or specialize in sculpting, which involves creating their own objects and assets.
Photogrammetry
Photogrammetry is a specialized 3D technique that allows 3D objects to be created from numerous photographs taken of an object or scene from multiple angles. These photos are then compiled to determine the specific positioning, shape, and dimensions of the object in space, and then converted into a 3D model. Initially developed for engineering and urban planning, photogrammetry has become a way for artists to produce extremely accurate 3D models from real-life images.
Collage
An extension of the traditional, plastic approach to collage, digital collage involves searching for and cutting out multiple images, extracting them from their original context, and recomposing them in a new arrangement to create a work of art. Artists can use their own photographs or find images on the internet.
Illustration
Digital illustrations are created using software such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or Procreate. As with drawing on paper, the artist uses a stylus to sketch a figure or object, usually on a tablet, to construct a scene or artistic universe. Unlike traditional drawing methods, digital illustration is much more forgiving, as mistakes can be easily corrected and drawn elements and objects can be easily moved around within a scene.
Video
Video artworks primarily use a recording camera, but may sometimes include additional post-processing or editing to distort, modify or add additional elements to the image. Some artists use state-of-the-art recording equipment to create macro zoom-ins or time lapses, privileging fidelity to the subject matter. Others use additional softwares to significantly modify or warp the video, creating an alternative perspective on the world that surrounds us.

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