Ancestry, AI and Art - Resident Artist Verona Sorensen’s Language of Lineage 

Written by Sophie Sobol

In the metaphysical web of identity, what are the channels we use to understand our lineage? Montreal-based artist Verona Sorensen explores the intersections between three main pathways; ancestry, AI and art. During her artist residency at ARTERIAL, Sorensen asks how our understanding of lineage can be explored in a new visual language.

Upon entering the space, evidence of Sorensen’s process lives all around you. Rows of colourful abstract images line the walls, family trees mapped on large brown paper peek out of the corner and everywhere, teal and magenta explode out of white canvases. In this space, Sorensen plays with repeating forms in the hopes of  “letting them dance together.”

Her process began back in October during her first stay at ARTERIAL, where she focused on continuing the development of 10 paintings that explored her father’s lineage and 10 paintings that explored her mother’s. Once she had returned to Montreal, she began plugging those suggestive paintings into an image-to-image A.I. program called Platform A.I., which amalgamated those pieces together to create thousands of potential combinations, visually exploring her imagined digital genetics.

“Parallelling my parents, combining the genes and the DNA… I’m one version of what that might look like.”

Continuing her exploration, she trained the AI technology to adapt to a new set of images - paintings she created of plants and flowers endemic to her mother’s native island of Sibuyan, Philippines. This rich cornucopia of colour and form, of flowers that can only be found in this particular ecosystem, added to Sorensen’s layers of visual identity. 

“It [AI training and output] just keeps going deeper and deeper until there is some visual imagery that is compelling or speaks to me, not necessarily with any clarity but just is appealing… And so the time here [in this art residency], feels like I’ve been almost flirting with different directions of exploration.”

Another of Sorensen’s directions was her research into the real people of her past; exploring both her father’s Norwegian and her mother’s Filipino lineage. Initially anticipating spending most of her time on her father’s Viking heritage, this research into her ancestry yielded unimagined results. What she discovered instead was a long line of American ancestry, which included pioneer and frontiersman, Daniel Boone, and potentially even presidential figures (Eisenhower, Nixon, Lincoln). It was in this research process that she realized how easily a family line can expand and reach out but can also end, and being without children herself, she reaffirmed this desire for lineage with her art.

“It’s interesting to be contemplating lineage when I know that I’m not contributing necessarily through continuing that line but through my art.”

The process of learning this visual language is ongoing. With help of a Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec Exploration and Research grant, Sorensen’s artist residency has proven to be an important time for her own self-discovery. The next chapter of Sorensen’s research leads into the realm of Healing. She asks the question, “Can a painting heal?” - Can the intention of a piece of art be for healing and for growth?

For more from Verona Sorensen, visit her website: https://www.veronasorensen.art/.