AI Futuristic Narratives in Historical Artistry

A collection bridging the tradition of Islamic Persian art with the possibilities of artificial intelligence. Rooted in the complexities of contemporary conflict, the project honours the legacies of Persian poets, artists and philosophers such as Rumi and Hafez, and the values of cultural preservation, respect and open-mindedness.

The collection features 30 AI-generated artworks, each paired with an original AI-assisted poem and printed on aluminium plates of 29 × 50 cm, a nod to traditional manuscript dimensions and to the meeting of the organic Persian miniature with an inorganic, machine-driven future. The choice of thirty pieces follows The Conference of the Birds by Farid ud-Din Attar: as only thirty birds reach the end of the journey and discover the Simurgh within themselves, the collection mirrors that path of introspection.

“The realization that the divine resides within one’s soul, and that enlightenment is a collective yet deeply personal journey, is a theme I wished to encapsulate through my work.”

The back of the plate

“I selected aluminium metal to convey the concept of the machine, bridging the organic with the inorganic, and reflecting on our intertwined future with technology. On the reverse side of each plate, I’ve inscribed, using a Dremel tool, the corresponding poem, miniature decorative elements, and my signature. This act of personalization seeks to diminish the distance between the viewer and my artistic intentions, offering a tangible connection to the conceptual underpinnings of the work.”

The engraving is what makes each work unique. The image, the poem and the animation exist as files and on the blockchain; the back of the plate, drawn and written by hand with a Dremel, exists only once. Each piece is phygital: a digital work bound to a physical body that cannot be copied.

Whispers Across Time

No. 2 of 30

The Virtual Dervish

No. 7 of 30

The poems are engraved in English on the plates. Here they appear with their Farsi translation.

The thirty works

Process

• Poems. Guided by the artist, AI writes poems drawing on the tradition of Persian Islamic poetry but set in a futuristic world, from the love between a human and a machine to a virtual poet exploring the metaverse. The poems are the narrative frame of the project.
• Images. An AI trained on a dataset of Islamic Persian miniature paintings gives each narrative its visual form, adopting the intricate styles and themes of the historical works.
• Animations. Each artwork has an animated sequence in which flowers, trees, animals and objects come to life, recorded on the blockchain and viewable on OpenSea.

The project is conceived with deep respect for Islamic aesthetics and cultural values. Where some compositions introduce robotic or hybrid elements, these are symbolic metaphors of inner transformation, not a depiction or critique of religious or social norms. For the Dubai and Riyadh exhibitions the selected pieces were reviewed with this sensitivity in mind.

Nine works from the collection were curated by Serena Tabacchi for Immaterika Gallery during Art Dubai 2024.

Catalogue

Download the catalogue (PDF, 38 pages, 4.6 MB). A red dot marks a work that has been sold.

Shown at

Art Dubai 2024 · A New Horizon Unfolds, L’Art Pur Foundation, Riyadh, 2025

Press

CIFRA TV interview, 2024