ISSN: XXXX-XXXX SPECIAL ISSUE 2025

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This special issue of Future Earth Journal:

Explorations in Art and Generative AI showcases

the work of visual art students from the Fall 2024

Selected Topics visual art course Explorations in Art

and AI. Each featured artist engaged with genera-

tive artiﬁcial intelligence (Gen AI) to create original

artworks that respond to and reﬂect on current

conversations in art and technology. Through their

unique practices, these students explored Gen AI as

a tool, a collaborator, and/or a conceptual inﬂuence.

The artworks featured here—and in the exhibi-

tion held at the TRU Art Gallery from March 17–29,

2025—highlight the cultural, ethical, environmental,

and creative dimensions of using Gen AI in artistic

production.

Raluchukwu Ojah is one of the participating

artists whose work exempliﬁes this exploration.

AI Tool: Copilot & Chat GPT

ARTIST STATEMENT

As a Nigerian artist studying art in Canada, I

draw inspirations from the dualities of my Nigerian

heritage in combination with the experiences I have

accumulated in the rich culture of Canada, using AI

as a collaborator to explore themes of my Nigerian

LANAYA MEETS AI

Raluchukwu Ojah

Bachelor of Fine Arts, 2025

Figure 1. Lanaya Meets AI (2024) by Raluchukwu Ojah. Mixed

Media, 36" x 48" (Image credit: Nicole Favron)

My work centers around African and Cana-

dian contemporary fashion themes, by blending

the portrait of the African woman with elements like

African Dutch wax fabrics and some Canadian store

inspired fabrics, I aim to show modern ways in which

Africans have begun to style their dressing aer

the westerners. The historical references, Comic

references, magazines and contemporary symbols

such as pencils which show my personal relation

as an artist and fake leaves to give an African vibe

aim to create dialogue in my work. I invite viewers

to reﬂect on the everchanging dynamic of cultural

legacies and the way they resonate in today’s con-

temporary world. By incorporating these elements,

I have created this collage that celebrates African

contemporary fashion and reﬂects on my views on

how AI can impact on my works positively.

[I chose] two contemporary AI artists

to get inspiration from and to also

incorporate interesting ways these

artists express their ideas. They are:

• Reﬁk Anadol

• Memo Akten

I began by asking ChatGPT to generate an

image of African woman wearing African fabric,

the ﬁrst image it generated was perfect for me. The

next stage was to purchase dierent African fabrics

that matched the image generated. While working

I added elements o my personal intuition, I used

the image as a guideline for where to start and stop

each artistic design.

I aim for it to resonate personally with viewers,

by sparking conversations about human relation-

ships, cultural intersections and how they aect

both parties, and the evolving role of AI in art.

Ultimately, my journey with AI is both a personal

exploration and a way to show pride in the beauty

of my cultural heritage in a world of technological

possibilities.

I seek inspiration from * Pencil artist Kelvin

Okafor; I got my sense of charcoal application from

Kelvin Okafor; I always go back to watch his videos

once I feel stuck.* CBE Yinka Shonibare; I got my

Fashion sense from Yinka, he uses the Dutch wax

fabric in his works, and I ﬁnd it interesting on how

he found a way to relate the colonial period with the

cultural identity and contemporary storytelling. With

the help of ChatGPT, I was able to generate an image

of an African woman wearing a replica of the Dutch

style fabric. These fabrics are merged with collages

of dierent images and art materials which ranges

from my Nigerian culture, personal interests to excit

ing images from magazines. This merge represents

the near future of AI collaborating fully with artists

and shows the process in which data is fed into the

AI platforms. AI also serves as a companion in ide-

ation and design techniques, helping me reﬁne the

visual narratives in areas of the headwrap and fab-

ric-collage merge.

Aer the image was generated on ChatGPT, I

began sourcing out textures and symbols that carry

cultural signiﬁcance., I then blended AI-generated

designs with organic elements, hereby inviting a

dialogue between technology and tradition. I have

used bright colors and intricate paerns to evoke

the vibrancy of African aesthetics, while the tactile

assembly of the collage oers depth and contrast,

the aim is to encourage reﬂection on the roles of Art,

Fashion and how they relate to my African identity.

Theme: The juxtaposition of African histori-

cal references in relation to Canadian culture and

norms.

Figure 2. Prompts to ChatGPT to generate ideas for a collage.

The top right images are Ral’s original artwork. The boom im-

age is ChatGPT’s response, inﬂuenced by Ral’s original artworks.

I interacted with Copilot while dra-

ing out the plans for this project, I had

the idea to create a col¬lage of mixed

media, but I didn’t know exactly how

to go about it. Then I asked AI (Copi-

lot) of interesting ways to produce

contemporary portraits in collage.

Copilot gave me some useful ideas to

begin work with such as using a dier-

ent surface to work on, using cultural

and historical references and imple¬-

menting cutout pictures. However, I

still desired a visual representation of

these examples. I tried to upload my

artwork unto Copilots platform but

to no avail. So I switched to ChatGPT.

contemporary world through Dutch wax fabrics. *

Reﬁk Anadol; I chose Reﬁk because of his bright use

of colors. I also ﬁnd his way of collecting data like

the collage depiction which shows dierent images

all as one. *Memo Akten; I like Memo abstraction,

I aimed to achieve that level of distortion in the

fabric-collage area which would give the viewers

dierent opinions.

Process

Ral fed two images of his artworks to CHAT-

GPT and asked it for suggestions for incorporating

further collage elements. He then asked DALL-E to

produce an image that incorporated the sugges-

tions provided into his original artworks, but DALL-E

was unable to accommodate that request. It did,

however, make its own example. Ral decided to use

that example as a reference to make a hand-made

version of the work, using materials available to him

for the collage elements and adapting it to his own

style.

Figure 3. DALL-E generated image used as a reference for Ral’s

original artwork.

Lanaya Meets AI (2024) by Raluchukwu Ojah. Mixed media, 36" x 48" (Image credit:

Nicole Favron)