Google Arts & Culture launches online retrospective of South African artist Esther Mahlangu

Google Arts & Culture launched an online retrospective to honor South African artist Esther Mahlangu on her 91st birthday.

The digital archive contains more than 45 stories and a collection of materials that document her life, art, and legacy for a global audience. Researchers and curators worked with the artist to address a gap in her historical record. Because existing archives lacked information on her life before 1980, the team conducted workshops and interviews to document her early years.

These sessions captured memories from when she began painting at age 10, including how she used feathers instead of brushes to discover her talent. The project used artificial intelligence to fill in these missing historical gaps. Collaborators from Google DeepMind, Google Arts & Culture Lab, and Domestic Data Streamers used the artist's memories and archival materials to generate still images. They then used Veo to transform those images into videos of her early days.

The retrospective includes materials from various institutions, such as the British Museum and Iziko Museums of South Africa. The exhibition aims to preserve her cultural heritage by using technology to recreate personal memories with historical accuracy.