Alisa Martynova | COSMOGONIE

In the exhibition COSMOGONIE, Alisa Martynova presents her interdisciplinary photographic project ANIMA, which explores the changing relationship between human, machine, and image in the age of artificial intelligence. Drawing inspiration from Donna J. Haraway and her seminal text A Cyborg Manifesto, the project examines the cyborg as a metaphor for hybrid identities—fluid, constantly shifting, and shaped through interactions between technology and the human imagination.

The work is grounded in the concept of animism, the attribution of spirit to inanimate objects. In ANIMA, intelligent machines act less like independent minds and more like mirrors—reflective systems that reconfigure human memories, gestures, and dreams into new visual forms. Through an AI program developed specifically for this project in collaboration with a scientist, the artist gains access to a hidden computational space: a realm where the machine “dreams” about the images it has previously encountered.

Over several years, the artist created a photographic archive for this project. Rather than remaining static documentation, these images are reinterpreted by artificial intelligence, becoming part of a new collaborative process between human and machine.

Previously discarded images are revived and transformed into dreamlike visual constructions—ghosts of photographs continuously reassembled and reimagined. In this sense, the past is not fixed but constantly recomposed, existing simultaneously before and after the moment of creation.

Exhibition organized as part of the project “ANIMA”, supported by Strategia Fotografia 2025, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. 

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» GET TO KNOW THE ARTIST «

Alisa Martynova (b. 1994) is an award-winning documentary photographer based in Florence, Italy. After studying Foreign Philology, she graduated from the professional photography program at Fondazione Studio Marangoni in 2019.

In 2025, she was selected among 222 emerging artists to invest in by Exibart and received the Strategia Fotografia grant from the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture to continue her project ANIMA at Ars Electronica and FACT Liverpool. ANIMA was also awarded the Beyond Future Art Prize 2025 in Hong Kong.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Fotografia Europea, Cortona on the Move, La Gacilly Photography Festival, Leica Galleries (Milan, Rome, Florence, Bologna), and Helsinki Photography Festival, and published in Internazionale,  D-Repubblica, Leica Fotografie International, Fisheye magazine and 20er magazine.