This work interrogates the impact of cultural and racial biases embedded in AI-driven processes. It utilizes a pre-trained AI model on historical oil paintings, applied to an original photograph, The Sound of Laughter by Hersley Casero, capturing a Southeast Asian boy mid-laugh. The AI’s transformation shifts his free-spirited expression into that of a European-looking child, embodying Eurocentric features with pale skin and blonde hair. This stylistic translation emphasizes the limitations and bias in datasets commonly used in artificial intelligence, where "classical" often defaults to Western norms.

The piece speaks to the erasure of identity in algorithmic curation, where innocent gestures are reformatted through a historical, racially selective lens. By recontextualizing a joyful, open expression, it questions the role of AI in distorting and reconfiguring identity according to underlying dataset biases. Here, "Curation is Political" serves as a critical reminder that the datasets we select—or fail to diversify—reflect and reinforce existing cultural narratives, making choices in curation inherently powerful and impactful.