Forced Amnesia

Taking inspiration from digital technologies and sceneries from computer games, the artist Mary-Audrey Ramirez (b. Luxembourg, Luxembourg, 1990; lives and works in Berlin) creates immersive worlds that spring from the cosmos of her inner mind. Her installations make the viewers feel like they have been transported to inside a game. To realize them, she also taps into the creative potential of artificial intelligence. As Ramirez sees it, such collaboration between human and machine lets both sides support each other in their creative processes. The blending of fact and fiction and the ongoing migration of the digital into our world are integral components of her practice. Reading as voyages straight into her nightly dreams, her works are suffused with a dystopian beauty, with flashes here and there of a subtle sense of humor that lighten the impact of her motifs and provide relief from the powerful sense of gloom.

Forced Amnesia, the artist's second comprehensive monograph (XOXO, Winter Is Coming, DISTANZ, 2020), is released on occasion of her exhibitions at Kunsthalle Gießen and Casino Luxembourg. Essays by Nadia Ismail, Damien Mecheri, and Ji-Hun Kim analyze Ramirez's practice. With a piece of creative writing contributed by the artist Julia Scher.