Art Facial Intelligence at the 2026 Chengdu Biennale Three stages of a visual language: painting, programmable digital art and AI portraiture.
08th Feb 2026
Jacky Tsai presents Art Facial Intelligence (《艺脸智慧》) at the 2026 Chengdu Biennale, within 烟火指数 at Chengdu Art Museum. The presentation brings together three stages of his practice, tracing a visual idea from a monumental painting into programmable digital art and AI-generated portraiture.
Installation view, Chengdu Biennale, 2026.
01 / Painting
In the six-metre-wide A Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix (2022), birds, flowers and landscape conceal figures of Guan Yu and Guanyin. Positive and negative space invite the viewer to discover a picture within a picture.
A Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix, 2022.
02 / Programmable digital art
Bitcoin — Buddha, Venus and Guan Yu (2022) brings this hidden-image principle into motion. Responding to Bitcoin market movements, Guan Yu appears during strong rises, Venus in calmer conditions and Buddha during sharp falls — a playful reflection of confidence, composure and the search for reassurance.
Bitcoin — Buddha, Venus and Guan Yu, 2022.
03 / AI portraiture
Developed with CreateAI, Art Facial Intelligence extends Tsai’s bird-and-flower language into individual faces. Photographs contributed by volunteers became the starting points for generated portraits; approximately thirty were selected by the artist for a repeating screen sequence at the biennale.
Selected portraits from Art Facial Intelligence, developed with CreateAI.
Across the three stages, the same enquiry takes different forms: an image discovered through looking, transformed through data, and reimagined through the human face.
