Cleo Maloney, Silliman College

Cleo Maloney, Silliman College

I was immediately struck by the thoroughness and dedication to material and pictorial exploration Cleo brings to each of her projects, but also her nuanced command of language. This ability to be both inquisitive and also reabsorb what she learns into her own projects is unique amongst any students I have taught and has continued to this day. Cleo began research into AI in 2023, and intuitively turned the tables on the power dynamic inherent to such big data harvesting: the specificity of her age/gender/identity as an ideal target to be sold to others as a product becomes the raw material by which she inserts self-portraiture into impressive tableaus. This age-old self-referential approach intelligently sidesteps the naive embrace of novelty technology, offering the viewer a deeper and more critical glimpse of a young artist wrestling with canonical systems of representation through striking, poised and fragmented images in her painting and drawing practice.

Ryan Sluggett, Lecturer in Painting/Printmaking, Yale School of Art