Experience the art and legacy of Dr. Esther Mahlangu

In collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, we used AI to visually recreate Esther’s undocumented memories. The process brought us closer to her work and prompted further recollections from Esther herself.

This project brought our curatorial and archival work together with the technical expertise of Google DeepMind and Google Arts & Culture Lab, alongside research and design studio Domestic Data Streamers’ synthetic memories initiative. Through a series of workshops and interviews, we were able to document a missing period of Mam’ Esther’s history, from when she started painting at age 10 until her first documented works in 1980. These stories — such as the moment she discovered her talent for painting as a 10-year-old using feathers instead of a brush — became the source material for our work. Following the methodology from the synthetic memories initiative and using archival material, the team generated still images based on Esther’s memories. They then used Veo to turn the images into videos that brought Esther’s early days to life.

The stories also contribute to the online archive of Esther’s life on Google Arts & Culture. More than 45 exhibitions, curated in collaboration with Art of Contemporary Africa, Iziko Museums of South Africa, the British Museum, the Jean Pigozzi Collection, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and Serpentine, tell the story of how she came to be known in the world, through her artwork, archives, Street View, and more.