TT
TiananmenTehran

TT TiananmenTehran (2026) is a technoetic, generative art installation that investigates the subtle, often invisible lines that connect state violence, global political and economic convenience, and collective struggles for freedom of expression and human rights. It draws a transversal relationship between two historically distant yet structurally resonant events: the repression of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in 1989, and the violent suppression of protests in Tehran, Iran, in 2026. Rather than establishing a direct historical comparison, TT operates through entanglement, examining how similar mechanisms of control, denial, and technological mediation recur across time.

At the core of the installation is a series of 37 chimeric masks, each representing one year between the two massacres. Every mask is generated through a generative AI process that algorithmically hybridizes two faces: one drawn from archival images of a Tiananmen Square protester in 1989, and another from images of a protester participating in the 2026 demonstrations in Tehran. These source images are taken from photographs circulated online through official, semi-official, and extra-official media, reflecting how protest is simultaneously documented and instrumentalized by media systems.

The generative pipeline begins with AI-based image morphing, in which the two faces are progressively melted into one another, producing a sequence of transitional frames. From these animations, specific in-between frames are selected and translated into three-dimensional models using AI-based 3D generation tools. The resulting meshes are fabricated as life-size, 3D-printed masks. The masks are intentionally designed to be unreadable by facial-recognition systems, proposing opacity as a form of resistance in a context where surveillance technologies play an increasingly central role in identifying, tracking, and suppressing protesters.

In the exhibition space, the masks are installed side by side on vertical support sticks, evoking the physical presence and density of a street protest. Arranged as a collective rather than as isolated objects, they recreate the spatial logic of bodies gathered in public space, transforming the gallery into a suspended protest site—one that exists in between commemoration and activation.

The installation extends beyond static sculpture through augmented reality interaction. An AR application allows visitors to scan each mask using an iPad. When scanned—whether the mask is displayed or worn—the generative AI animation is superposed in real time, revealing the continuous transition from one protester’s face to the other. This layered experience emphasizes the in-between condition of the work: between past and present, visibility and erasure, documentation and disappearance.

TT TiananmenTehran (2026) positions AI not as a neutral tool of representation, but as a behavioral and ethical medium. By transforming archival images into chimeric, unidentifiable faces, the project resists both documentary literalism and biometric capture. It frames protest as a planetary condition shaped by transnational infrastructures of power and proposes opacity, hybridity, and embodiment as strategies for memory, dignity, and survival within contemporary regimes of control.