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Andrés Arizmendy Benavides - Liminal Alterity

Colombia

Artist Statement

Through self-portraits generated with AI models and digital manipulation—where I allow myself to play with the concepts of liminality and alterity—I explore, traverse, and blur the boundaries surrounding ideas of identity, authorship, artifice, the body, and reality. This invites a sense of estrangement and opens a conversation about the possibility of being another. This practice of generating self-portraits has evolved into my personal project Liminal Alterity, through which I question the self and the potential for its displacement, imagining a fluid identity in constant transformation. It also raises a broader inquiry into the human experience itself, proposing the freedom to become other. In creating these images, I pursue the notion of estrangement, as it allows for a space of connection with the viewer—one that can evoke an emotion or provoke a question. Additionally, I deliberately incorporate my own presence—my face—into the generation of these images as an act of appropriation, claiming authorship and ownership within the context of generative AI. I am also interested in exploring an artistic practice that is socially responsible, while developing a poetic and critical language.

Published in >
The AI Art Magazine, Number 2
El loco (The fool), AI generation, 2025
El loco (The fool), AI generation, 2025.
Andrés Arizmendy Benavides - Liminal Alterity, El loco (The fool), AI generation, 2025

Description

The Fool forms part of a larger series in which I explore the notion of syncretism and shape an aesthetic born from a blend of photography, painting, and sculpture. In this self-portrait I invoke the Fool’s archetype from the tarot and place it in dialogue with barrio-style murals, ex-votos, and codices rooted in Latin-American popular culture. I also pursue a certain realism—achieved through the photographic approach and lighting—only to fracture it with the synthetic look of the skin and textiles. That tension lets me play with what is “real” and what is not. Finally, I want viewers to meet this character through the gaze itself: his eyes point straight outside the frame, confronting us.

Process

For the past year and a half I have been re-examining what a self-portrait can be—especially now that image-generation models have become a powerful artistic tool. This piece emerges from that ongoing research/creation process. It also answers a personal urge to fold this technology into my practice and to expand a visual language that grows clearer and more forceful with each experiment. I want the work to spark a constant dialogue between being oneself and being “other.” I enjoy provoking, I enjoy play—and that energy drives the image.

Tools

I mainly rely on Flux to generate images from prompts I craft in advance. Those prompts draw on several LoRAs I trained with my own images and stylistic references. The outputs are then refined in Photoshop, where I polish every detail until the picture aligns with my vision.

Image credit:
Essay by
The AI Art Magazine, Number 2
Published in:
The AI Art Magazine, Number 2,
September 2025
WHY?
The magazine reveals what happens when humans and machines get creative together. We’re throwing the doors wide open believe it's going to be a big party—come in and let’s dance.
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