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Céline Shen and the Art of Living With A.I.

Drawing on Eastern philosophy, textile design and choreography, the French-Chinese artist proposes a vision of human-machine relations built not on conflict but on curiosity and cohabitation.

A central element of the debate around A.I. concerns the fear that artificially intelligent machines could develop a form of consciousness, even emotions. Whether they might rebel against their human creators is a scenario many Western sci-fi works have explored, reinforcing both the conflictual nature of the human-machine dichotomy and the fear that has long accompanied technological advancement. Artists have also tackled these concepts, often in much the same way. Some, however, like multidisciplinary French-Chinese artist Céline Shen, engage with A.I. differently. She’s part of a new vanguard of artists working at the intersection of traditional and technological processes, collaborating with scientific laboratories and embracing a post-anthropocentric way of life in which robots and machines become companions rather than antagonists.

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Moving fluidly between art and spirituality while engaging with some of today’s most advanced technologies, Shen aims to undercut technophobia by exploring the possibility of a more harmonious emotional symbiosis between human and non-human beings.  “I believe that this is what connects the constellation of my research: making sure that contemporary technologies—A.I., robotics, augmented reality, blockchain—do not flatten experience, but instead reopen regimes of presence, perception and memory,” Shen tells Observer while walking through her recent show at ArtVerse in Paris.

Her work can be best understood in the context of an Eastern sensibility, where there has never been the same strong cultural opposition between human and machine. Within Asian spiritualities and philosophies, machines, spirits, monsters, objects and other presences are not necessarily  from outside the human realm or against it. “They can be understood as part of a more complex synthetic field of relations,” Shen explains. In Chinese traditions, the human being is represented as inseparable from nature, plants, groups and other entities. “In this framework, the human is not a sovereign figure standing apart from the world, but one element inside a larger network.”

Shen’s practice is shaped by an interconnectedness that resists the Cartesian dualism of mind and body and the derived Western tendency to treat the machine as a separate entity. In her system, the robot is not just a robot; it is another kind of energy moving through the same environment, a presence that participates in a larger network of beings, objects and forces. She draws on art’s imaginative potential to explore possible parallels between technology and the human soul, and to foster a more harmonious dialogue and collaboration between the two. This is where, as Shen puts it, “soul tech” truly begins: not in the quest for machines that would feel as we do, but in the invention of situations, dispositifs and encounters that deepen our own capacity to feel—something that technologies like A.I. allow us to intensify.

Shen prefers the term “aura,” even though she knows it’s heavily charged. “I do not use it nostalgically, nor as a sacred term. I mean that very particular quality through which a work holds within itself something of the presence that brought it into being,” she explains. “Perhaps, in the language of my ancestors, I would say that this has to do with the Chinese ‘qi’, with the vital breath that passes through all living beings. I am deeply attached to the idea that a garment, an image, a machine, a space can retain something of the energy of those who have passed through them.”

Shen’s mixed background in choreography, philosophy and textile design has shaped the way her work moves fluidly across disciplines, giving form to these layered connections. Her practice often begins with textiles, then expands into choreography, robotics, performance, digital space and installation as part of an imaginative, exploratory exercise in world-building. “What interests me is walking between different spaces and between mediums. I think there is a kind of fringe where we can connect to multimedia spaces,” she reflects.

Even when she begins with physical artworks,........

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