An artist of Eelam Tamil descent, Christopher Kulendran Thomas uses artificial intelligence technologies to examine the foundational fictions of Western individualism and the complex legacies of imperialism.

His exhibition Safe Zone combines painting and television—two historical mediums of soft power—across two major bodies of work. The exhibition brings together two ground zeros—one that was witnessed by billions in real time and another that occurred in its aftermath but went unwitnessed by the outside world.

At the centre of the exhibition is Peace Core (sphere), 2024, a video work of infinite duration produced in collaboration with Annika Kuhlman, co-commissioned by WIELS, Brussels, FACT, Liverpool and Artspace, Sydney. Peace Core (sphere) features American television footage first broadcast in the moments before the world-changing events of September 11, 2001.

The rotating sphere of screens uses a purpose-built AI algorithm to endlessly re-edit and remix that fateful morning’s television footage and its accompanying sound.