L Gallery Section B, CICA Museum
June 18 – 22, 2025
2025.6.18 – 22
The Black Atlantic
The Black Atlantic series engages Paul Gilroy’s framework of trans-cultural exchange and resistance as a lens to interrogate the fraught potential of AI as both a tool for recovering subjugated histories and an agent of epistemological destabilisation. Through promptography—the ritualistic crafting of text-to-image prompts that merge archival fragments, speculative fiction, and Afro-diasporic cosmologies—these digital works generate speculative artefacts of Black agency erased by colonial record-keeping: AI-rendered portraits of maroon communities reconstructed from plantation inventory lists, and algorithmic re-imaginings of Middle Passage survivals fused with Afrofuturist technologies. This practice consciously inhabits Baudrillard’s simulacrum, creating “histories” that never were to confront the voids left by slavery’s bureaucracy, using AI’s capacity for pattern hallucination to materialise what Saidiya Hartman terms “critical fabulation.” While the technology enables visualization of otherwise unimaginable resistance narratives—training diffusion models on fragmented inputs from Igbo Landing oral histories, Haitian revolutionary ephemera, and contemporary Black Lives Matter protest imagery—it also exposes the colonial logics embedded in datasets, as seen in faces that dissolve under Eurocentric recognition algorithms or landscapes resisting cartographic capture. The works celebrate AI’s power to democratise historical reclamation through open-source model architectures that transform users into co-conspirators in ancestral summoning yet embed glitch anchors as ethical reminders of synthetic media’s dangerous fluency. By rendering the Black Atlantic as a neural network where past and future resistance pulse through algorithmic time steps, the project proposes a new digital folklore—one that harnesses AI’s world-building potential while inoculating against its post-truth erosion of collective memory, demanding we cultivate critical literacies to navigate the coming storm of algorithmic ghosts.
Jamie Bradbury, born in Toronto in 1981, is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice spans visual arts, music, and independent research-creation over the past two decades. Now living and working between Corner Brook and Burgeo, Newfoundland, Bradbury holds a bachelor’s degree in Painting from OCAD University (2006), a master’s degree from Central Saint Martins in London (2010), and a Bachelor of Education from Memorial University of Newfoundland (2024). His work explores the interplay between autobiographical narratives and collective histories, blending personal and found materials to challenge the boundaries between individual and shared experiences. In his recent series, ‘The Black Atlantic,’ Bradbury engages Paul Gilroy’s framework of trans-cultural exchange and resistance to interrogate AI’s potential as a tool for recovering subjugated histories and an agent of epistemological destabilisation. Through promptography- ritualistic crafting of text-to-image prompts that merge archival fragments, speculative fiction, and Afro-diasporic cosmologies- he generates digital artefacts that reimagine Black agency erased by colonial record-keeping, while also exposing the colonial logics embedded in AI datasets. Bradbury’s representations of land, sea, and environment frame the meaning of ‘home’ as both mutable and concrete, examining how identity is repositioned when its foundational roots are lost. His works have been exhibited across North America and Europe, most recently at the International Art Fair Venice 2025, Royal Cambrian Academy of Art in Conwy, with previous showings at Arte Fiera Bologna, Santorini Biennale, AACDD Festival London, Art Toronto, and AQUA Miami. He has been featured in Canadian Art, Voir Magazine, CBC News, and Garageland. He first gained national attention in Canada through the TV program Star Portraits, where he painted Canadian TV icon Debbie Travis. Bradbury’s works are held in collections such as the Portrait Gallery of Canada, Debbie Moore O.B.E., and the ALDO collection. In addition to his visual art practice, he collaborates with choreographer Marissa Wong on dance and soundscape projects, presenting at venues including The Dance Centre in Vancouver and TEDxSoma. Recently, Bradbury was awarded a Canadian Council of the Arts award for Movement and Sound creation, reflecting his ongoing commitment to interdisciplinary exploration and innovation.
