Lina A.'s art, using photography, installation, and moving image, the practice explores the ways in which nostalgia, artificial intelligence, and surveillance capitalism reshape how we perceive, preserve, and reconstruct visual narratives. Whether assembling forgotten SD cards into new family archives or crafting fabricated histories through AI-generated images, Lina's practice operates within the liminal space between truth and fiction, presence and erasure.

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List five core themes or messages you aim to convey through your art.  

Artistic authorship is one. One of the very first projects I have done was fully reliant on chance and luck. I was boiling my film with lemon juice to specifically destroy the images in an uncontrollable way. The final image was a result of my own artistic decision as well as an unpredictable chemical deterioration. In a way, it was inspired by Metzger’s auto-destruction. Memory is a big theme as well. That being said, it is essentially the distinction between personal and collective memory that interests me. My most recent exhibition, Random  Access Memory, was focused on the blending and mixing of personal and collective. I used discarded SD cards that I bought on eBay and projector slides that I found in charity shops to collect family, vacation, and birthday photos from entirely random sources. I collaged them together, using my own imagery as well, creating a collective family archive that seems familiar to anyone who sees it.  Nostalgia is in a very similar vein. The feeling closely connected to the notion of a disrupted and inaccurate memory requires careful exploration. In order to approach it, I mainly used philosophical and sociological discourse as well as personal experience. At the end of the day, nostalgia is the loss of a non-existent place. Parafiction is more of a genre than a theme that I extensively work with. I have created an installation, "Unrequited Land", that was essentially an archive forgery. You could see film, aged photos, handwritten notes, and pages from a book in a glass vitrine. Next to it, a pseudo-documentary was playing, describing the life of an imaginary persona. A lot of people asked  me where I found all of this archival material. The trick was that I didn’t; I assembled everything partly using found footage from the 1960s and partly using AI image generation.  I, however, consciously only used my own imagery to generate the photos that I then printed in the darkroom for further authenticity. I very much enjoy the role of an unreliable narrator.  Folklore is the final theme that I like to tap into. It is essentially the first tool for memory-making. In my moving image work, "Sit on the Fence", and a publication, "As They Say", I use wordplay and an enigmatic narrative to mimic a folk story.

How does your art engage with or comment on pressing contemporary issues—social,  political, or environmental?  

My work crosses the pressing issues of our time: privacy, data anxiety, and the ephemerality of digital archives. At an age when personal documentation is precious and precarious, I  investigate the place where memory remains, where lost files, discarded photographs, and recontextualized media erode the concept of ownership and authorship. Through photography, montage, and installation, I question how digital culture constructs our sense of identity, history, and control. At the heart of my practice is the tension between preservation and erasure. Have we actually erased our data, or does it linger in some liminal, inaccessible space? My use of discarded SD  cards and abandoned slides speaks to this uncertainty. In my practice, these images are recontextualized and separated from their initial intent but still charged with personal meaning. By layering and blurring bodies, playing with archival appearances, and setting images in sentimental domestic frames and trinkets, I am calling attention to how individual visual records are maintained in a state of vulnerability susceptible to loss as well as exploitation.

This is tied to larger political concerns. The contemporary digital archive is not a politically neutral environment; it is shaped by corporations and institutions that harvest, censor, and commodify visual arts. Surveillance capitalism and consumer capitalism meet in how images are collected, filtered, and repurposed. My work is a critique of this process, echoing the artistic strategies of Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel's Evidence. I like to focus on how the new digital infrastructure redistributes our relationship to memory. The images that I  reconstruct and re-use are already lost or abandoned, yet by interpretation, they gain new agency. Socially, my artwork is a query: Who retains our memory? Is it intimate, or has it been reduced to something commodified and fashioned through mass-experienced production? By presenting photographs in shapes that mimic domestic keepsakes—acrylic mounts, wood panels, transforming digital frames—I play with the appearance of intimacy and nostalgia.  These familiar shapes draw people into the illusion of private ownership, only to undercut it by rearranging faces, locations, and narratives. The final images evoke the plasticity of memory: sometimes intimate and familiar, sometimes foreign and distant. Ultimately, my practice is one of individual and societal anxiety.

Artificial Intelligence is increasingly infiltrating creative fields. Do you see artificial intelligence as a threat, a tool, or a collaborator in the art world? 

As I have mentioned, some of my projects do use AI as a tool. I do not see it as a threat or a collaborator, that would give it too much agency, which it just does not possess.  The debate around the use of AI should, of course, continue. Do I think that the upcoming  Christie’s auction that only features AI art is ethical or fair? No, I really don’t think so.  AI, as any development, should be used ethically, the technology itself is never the root of evil. The desire to profit and outsource labour is what should cause concern. The way I use AI in my work, however, is always deliberated by the conceptual need or cause. For instance, in my project "Unrequited Land", which mainly explores nostalgia, the AI is used to alter my own archive of analogue photography in order to create familiar yet slightly unsettling places. Through the mistakes of the AI generation that I leave visible on purpose,  the viewer gets to deduce and figure out the forgery of the archive. In that way, I use the imperfection of AI-generated imagery as an artistic tool.

In a world flooded with imagery, what responsibility do artists have to stand out and say something authentic? 

I don’t think artists need to bear the burden of authenticity. At the end of the day, there are only seven basic plots. It is borderline impossible to produce something truly authentic and fully your own. Everyone produces art that is a result of their own background, upbringing, and absorption of certain cultural and social themes and influences. My practice, as I  previously mentioned, almost always relies on outside sources like found footage and archival materials. Art production is more of a reaction to me, rather than an action on its own. As long as there is something I can comment on, I can create an installation, film, or photo series. 

One of my projects that shows my approach is "Dijital Junk", a publication that is not about producing new imagery, but about curating and reassembling personal history. Comprised of digital collages constructed out of both metaphorical and literal trinkets, Dijital Junk explores the overwhelming saturation of images in contemporary life. Rather than generating more visuals in an already image-heavy world, I turn inward, sifting through the archives of a life inadvertently documented—phone snapshots, undeveloped film strips, sketchbook pages, and handwritten notes. This publication serves as both a digital spring cleaning and an archaeological dig through my own visual footprint, questioning what is worth preserving and what should be discarded.

I see Dijital Junk as both a confinement and a preservation. It is essentially a zoo, where these snippets of personal history are caged, sorted, and categorised yet cherished. Much like memory itself, imagery is fluid, fragmentary, and subject to reinterpretation. In Dijital Junk, I  engage with the images I have amassed over a lifetime, seeking to understand their historical and personal significance. This project, like much of my work, does not seek to add to the ever-growing archive of digital media, but to interrogate and redefine what already exists.

What unusual or unexpected sources of inspiration have deeply influenced your work?  

An unusual but deeply influential source of inspiration for my work is seeing other people’s camera rolls. There’s something intimate and revealing about the unfiltered, everyday images people choose to keep—snapshots of mundane moments, accidental compositions, or personal visual obsessions. I’m also drawn to niche, obscure Vimeo artists whose work often feels raw, experimental, and unconstrained by commercial expectations. A major influence on my approach to art-making is Dumpster Archeology by Dustie Carter, a film that explores the remnants of discarded lives and the stories embedded in forgotten objects. This idea of excavation—both literal and digital—has shaped how I think about visual collecting and re-purposing images. Some of the research that has informed my thinking includes Hayden Carruth’s The Defeated  Generation, which speaks to a kind of disillusionment and resilience that resonates with my artistic practice, and Larissa Hjorth’s Personal Visual Collecting and Self-Cataloguing,  which examines how we organize and assign meaning to our digital archives. These texts,  along with my engagement with found imagery and overlooked media, continue to shape the way I approach storytelling and composition. I also run collaging workshops and the next one I am doing is in partnership with Palimpsest  Projects, run by curator Gina DeCagna. By working and collaborating with people from various backgrounds, I draw inspiration from their work, regardless of whether or not they are a practicing artist.

Do academic institutions still play a vital role in shaping artists today, or has self-taught creativity disrupted this tradition? 

While art institutions do play a pivotal role in many artistic careers, providing funding, space for research and collaboration, as well as opportunities to grow, I think, at the moment, what we are observing in the art world now is the rise of self-taught expression. Whereas an academic canon still exists and each established art institution would have its own unique agenda and style, we now see more authentic art born out of the routine and deeply personal.  And institutions are, in turn, now platforming emerging artists with unusual approaches and experimental techniques more than ever. Even though I do have a formal degree, I very much believe that it is not a requirement for a successful art career. Any institutional programming, however, is useful for organizational purposes and helps the artist build networks, present work, and participate in international events. With that being said, institutional or commercial representation remains a difficult step, especially for early-career artists. So what happens is the resurgence of artist collectives and artist-led groups, publications, and galleries that, once again, remain outside of the strictly institutional narrative and can contribute to the experimental aspects of artistic practice without the bounds of expectation.

Are there any upcoming projects or dreams that you’re particularly excited about?  

Since I have just mentioned artist-led collectives, I wanted to also highlight an initiative that I  recently started. ROAM is an artist-led initiative designed to provide emerging artists with accessible and constructive feedback on their work. In collaboration with invited guest artists and educators, I regularly organise group critiques for artists who may not have a formal education or those who are already beyond undergraduate or postgraduate study. The structure of the critique sessions is intentionally intimate, with typically fewer than ten participants. Each artist presents one project or artwork, and every participant has 20-30  minutes to receive feedback from the group. This approach creates a more supportive and less intimidating environment than a traditional portfolio review, fostering insightful dialogue and varied perspectives from a group of peers. ROAM Crit aims to create a space where artists can refine their practice, exchange ideas, and develop their work outside of institutional settings. It is my belief that feedback from a community of artists can be invaluable in moving forward creatively and professionally.

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By navigating the tensions between digital permanence and disappearance, authorship and appropriation, personal memory and collective nostalgia, Lina's artistic approach extends beyond aesthetics into broader philosophical and political questions.