every asian in sex and the city is a tongue-in-cheek interrogation of in-built human biases that form the knowledge base and protocols of contemporary AI technology. In her first solo exhibition, Johanna Ng questions how politics of representation in popular media are echoed in the failure of representation lurking in AI neural networks. Drawing from the pop culture phenomenon Sex and the City as her source material, Ng traces the parallels between computer vision and network television and the continuing erasure of Asian bodies and identities.

Johanna Ng examines the hidden machinations of consumer grade AI applications, specifically their programmed offensive image filtering system. In order for AI models to avoid offensive imagery, they are trained in a flawed universal subjectivity—that we are all the same—and the erasure of diversity and specificity continues. Using Google’s Computer Vision and Text-to-image applications as test subjects, Ng lays bare the ingrained racial biases of artificial intelligence as they unknowingly and unsurprisingly whitewash bodies of colour.