GENESIS OF MY WORK AND CONTEMPORARY REFLECTIONS

Foreword

Witnesses and participants in an unprecedented anthropological transformation

Our generation is experiencing a unique anthropological shift in human history: we are simultaneously the last analog and the first digital. This transitional condition, far from being accidental, confers upon artists a particular aesthetic responsibility: that of revealing the ongoing transformation.

No user manual, guide to behavior, or set of actions exists for this unprecedented transitional situation. Previous generations lived in a purely tangible world; future generations will be born digital. We alone are experiencing this shift, this gradual transformation of humanity itself.

This pivotal position makes us privileged witnesses to a metamorphosis that unfolds over just a few decades. We observe in real time the emergence of new modes of perception, new forms of attention, and new identity structures that appear as we live increasingly close to machines.

My artistic work aesthetically documents this transformation in order to reveal it rather than simply endure it. Instead of nostalgically resisting this mutation or blindly embracing it, I propose to bear witness to its complexity and contradictions while showcasing the inner richness of humanity.

This coexistence reveals a particular beauty: that of being who embodies a historical transition. We are neither purely analog nor completely digital. We are something new: hybrid beings participating in a new humanity in the making.

Accepting this role of bridge generation, witness and actor of this transformation, constitutes an act of aesthetic responsibility for artists, philosophers and psychologists.

We must bear witness to this pivotal period and the transformation of humanity by fully embracing the one that constitutes us, with its fertile contradictions and unexplored potentialities.

OUR SINGULARITIES VERSUS THE SINGULARITY

HUMAN SINGULARITY: THE IRREDUCIBLE UNIQUENESS OF BEING

Every human being carries within them a fundamental singularity: that unique combination of experiences, perceptions, contradictions, and mysteries that ensures no two people in the universe are ever identical. This singularity does not reside in our measurable performances or talents, but in that mysterious and uncontrollable alchemy that transforms universal events into unique personal experiences.

Our uniqueness lies in our particular memory associations: the way your brain connects a childhood scent to a present emotion, a tone of voice to a forgotten memory, an autumn light to an inexplicable melancholy. It resides in our involuntary micro-reactions to the unexpected, our unique way of processing emotional information, our thoughts that belong only to us.

This unique human characteristic flourishes particularly in our internal contradictions: this remarkable capacity to be simultaneously courageous and anxious, generous and selfish, logical and irrational, empathetic and distant, often in the same day, sometimes in the same minute. These contradictions are not malfunctions to be corrected but the very signature of our complex humanity.

Our unique perceptual signature colors every moment: the way you see a sunset, feel a melody, interpret a glance, react to an injustice. Even in the face of the most universal stimulus, your brain produces a response that belongs only to us, filtered through our personal history, our buried traumas, our secret hopes, our unexplained fears.

This unique characteristic constitutes our irreplaceable cognitive and emotional heritage.

a treasure forged by millions of micro-experiences, conscious and unconscious choices, chance encounters that have sculpted our unique way of being in the world.

THE TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY: THE MATHEMATICAL POINT OF NO RETURN

In contrast to this organic and unpredictable human singularity, there looms the Technological Singularity, as theorized by mathematicians, computer scientists, and futurists. This singularity designates the hypothetical but probable tipping point where artificial intelligence will definitively and irreversibly surpass human intelligence in all cognitive domains.

The technological singularity represents an absolute discontinuity in the history of humanity: a tipping point after which the laws that govern our cognitive existence will fundamentally and forever change.

Beyond this critical threshold, AI will no longer be content to imitate, optimize or automate our mental processes - it will invent, create, anticipate and solve according to logics that may escape us forever.

The dizzying paradox of our time: the technological singularity, the fruit of our collective genius, could precisely threaten our individual human singularities with extinction. When machines excel in all areas of thought—creativity, intuition, empathy, innovation—what will remain that is specifically and irreplaceably human?

Will our unique value be reduced to our cognitive "bugs," our computational inefficiencies, our synaptic slowness? Will our contradictory emotions become mere vestiges of a bygone era?

THE CREATIVE TENSION BETWEEN THE TWO SINGULARITIES

These two unique characteristics enter into a creative and revelatory tension.

The more AI progresses toward its technological singularity of cognitive perfection, the more precious, rare, and irreplaceable our human singularity becomes. Not despite our shortcomings, but because of them. Not in spite of our contradictions, but through them.

This reversal of values constitutes one of the major aesthetic and philosophical revolutions of our time. Our inconsistencies, our mood swings, our emotional unpredictability, our “irrational” associations of ideas, our inexplicable intuitions are no longer flaws to be corrected or inefficiencies to be optimized, but cognitive treasures to be preserved, cultivated and celebrated.

The machine will always excel more in consistency, optimization, predictability, and measurable performance. We shine, and must continue to shine, in creative inconsistency, inexplicable intuition, contradictory will, improbable association, the beauty of fruitful error, the depth of our emotions, and the power of our perception.

This fundamental difference could constitute our last distinctive feature, our ultimate refuge of irreducible humanity in an increasingly automated world.

How my creative intuition led me towards pictorial multiplicity and fragmentation.

I am Agnès Monnet, a French artist listed in the Akoun art price guide, whose pictorial research focuses on portraiture, fragmentation, and perception. Trained in art school and psychology, with 35 years of professional experience as a graphic artist, I have been exploring for the past four years what characterizes humanity in our contemporary era.

I invite you to discover my approach through a series of articles. We begin with the genesis of my work.

In 1987, at art school, facing my first self-portrait, I had this intuition that would mark my life as an artist: what if I fragmented my portrait? This spontaneous choice would become the basis of my artistic work.

The genesis:

Over time, my artistic skills, creative intuition, understanding of psychological mechanisms, and visual expertise have converged into an artistic synthesis. This synthesis represents an approach where I express a broadened vision of human complexity in a rapidly changing world.

I then question an obvious point: when did we decide that consistency was better than authenticity?

For centuries, portraiture in Western art promoted an ideal of unity reflecting a vision of perfect personality, sometimes demonstrating social rank or a dominant character in a polished image.

Our true essence lies in our conscious and unconscious multiplicities. Singularity cannot be reduced to a polished external image. Human beings are more complex than they appear.

But our identity is not fixed - it is governed by dynamic processes, tensions, drives, contradictions, perpetual movements that follow the rhythm of our experiences, our feelings and our perception of the world.

My artistic mode of expression: fragmentation. This is not a negative explosion. It is a source of revelation of a truth in the portrait: that of a preserved human dimension.

This vision liberates portraiture from the obligation to be "coherent" and "polished," conforming to societal standards. Fragmentation supports the fundamental idea that behind every face lie multiple dimensions that constitute us. It allows for the complete representation of the individual, both public and private, revealed and hidden.

My approach reveals the beauty of our multifaceted nature rather than pursuing the illusion of a superfluous unity. Our society is evolving, and idealized portraits no longer reflect our contemporary reality.

In a world increasingly dominated by digital technology, humanity's last bastion will be internal. Through these portraits, authentic identity reveals itself as an unrestricted and boundless essence.

For there is a paradox in this tangible and digital world: the polished vision of our identities is now solely that generated by algorithms to categorize us. Conversely, we tend to multiply our identities across the digital world, publicly revealing certain facets of ourselves like never before.

This could revolutionize our perception of ourselves and the world!

In 2025, I decided to theoretically formalize my artistic approach which brings a new aesthetic to portraiture to reveal our contemporary multiplicity.

Découvrez comment cette intuition devient méthode dans “Quand ma propre multiplicité forge un nouveau concept aligné avec nos vies contemporaines”, prochain article qui paraitra dans 1 semaine.