Agnieszka Pilat

"I am a painter, and machines are my subject. I arrange machinery in formal compositions, appropriating traditions ranging from religious iconography to royal portraiture to evoke the power that technology commands in human society today. Like religious icons and royal portrayals of noble ancestry, my paintings conceptually trace the lineage of 21st-century robotics and artificial intelligence back to the steam-powered mechanisms of the Industrial Revolution and the electrification of factories and cities. My paintings reveal a historical continuum, paying tribute to the innovations of James Watt and Nicola Tesla, while also recognizing humanity’s legitimate fears of automation. These machines are preemptively posing for their place in museums of the future, provoking us to preemptively consider the trajectories they embody."