Marisa González: "Artificial Intelligence is Racist and Sexist"

Marisa González (Bilbao, 1943) describes herself as a "rare and solitary bird" in the Spanish art scene. A pioneer in generative art, she boldly combined art and technology. After a long journey, she received the 2023 Velázquez Prize for the Arts, worth 100,000 euros, which includes a retrospective at the Reina Sofía Museum, where González returns at the age of 81. She was 43 when she first exhibited in a museum. Her journey spans from the photocopier and fax to artificial intelligence.

'Marisa González. A Generative Way of Making' is the title of the exhibition that, until September 22, reviews her career at the Nouvel Building. This pioneer of communication and image reproduction technologies in the 80s considers herself "an art activist." Curated by researcher and cultural manager Violeta Janeiro, the retrospective covers five decades of González's production through twenty of her major series and projects, featuring over 80 works of various techniques and ambitions.

'Processes: Culture and New Technologies' was the title of her first exhibition at the 'Reina', created with Sonia Sheridan in 1986. Then and now, she wears the same dress. Back then, she explored the connections between culture and new technologies for the first time. She delved into the depths of computers, photocopiers, and faxes, just as she now faces artificial intelligence "without fear." She uses it "like any other tool," but insists that "the technique should not be the protagonist." She acknowledges it "can be improved" and does not hesitate to add that it is "sexist and racist; it always addresses me in the masculine," she laments.

"I am an activist and feminist," says González, who has tackled themes such as pacifism, equality, history, and climate change since her formative years in Chicago. For González, who experienced the mega-protests against the Vietnam War in the United States, the Trump era is "an unbearable nightmare that has created enormous confusion and must end as soon as possible." She is disturbed by "seeing the Gaza massacre every day without us doing anything."

Some early pieces, featuring images of violence against women and motherhood, have made the Bilbao artist the subject of recent research on the feminist genealogies of Spanish art.

The series of works from the seventies, created in the Generative Systems Department of the Art Institute of Chicago, demonstrates the artist's "early and sustained interest" in communication and image reproduction technologies, as highlighted by the museum's director, Manuel Segade.

Waste, debris, and industrial ruin are other recurring themes in González's work, becoming an essential aspect of her oeuvre. As an "archaeologist of ruin," she focused on a massive abandoned infrastructure, the Lemoniz nuclear power plant, in the mid-2000s. She documented the dismantling and emptying of the plant built on the Basque coast, which never operated due to popular opposition and ETA attacks that caused five deaths and nearly 300 attacks. González urged the Basque Government to "create a museum dedicated to energy," but "they didn't buy the idea." What is now an empty building "will end up being a fish farm or something similar," she speculates.

In the long series called 'Presences', she decontextualized a modest material like lint from domestic drying in the early eighties.

González also focused on marginal social phenomena. This is the case of 'Ellas, Filipinas' (2009-2010), a denunciation of labor slavery conceived as a 'report' on the ephemeral constructions that hundreds of displaced Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong erect for their Sunday leisure in one of the city's busiest economic zones during the week.

In the shadow of a financial skyscraper built by Norman Foster, the enslaved workers dance, eat, play bingo, and prepare packages for their families. The photos and videos documenting their labor exploitation shocked the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale directed by David Chipperfield.

The exhibition reflects the variety of media in Marisa González's practice, including hybrids like 'Musical Graphs' (1989-1990), pieces in which she translates contemporary scores into visual language using painting and photocopies. It also showcases installations like 'Dream. Scenes of Everyday Life' (1998) or the 'Luminarias' from the La Fábrica project (2000).

The journey concludes with 'La Fábrica' (1999-2000), an installation featuring a forest of black lamps projecting their light onto words written by Basque entrepreneurs blaming workers for the closure. Phrases like "They want a day off a week" or "They refuse to work the necessary hours" are confronted with photos and data of the workers that González crossed to respect the workers' privacy.

"I have few challenges left, but I will continue with smaller projects," says González, who has felt "limited by being a woman" in the art world. She acknowledges, however, that things have changed, but "there is still much to do." "For decades, women have been a rarity in this world, and now that we measure their presence statistically, most of the time we do not exceed 5 or 10% of women," she laments.

The Reina Sofía organizes the exhibition in collaboration with Azkuna Zentroa–Alhóndiga in Bilbao, where it will be shown in October.