2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange
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print this pageGuilty Until Proven Innocent: Recreating Memory through Imagemaking
Sephine Milan
Saturday, November 08 - 2:00PM to 2:20PM
In Guilty Until Proven Innocent, Sephine Milan explores the nuances of reconstructing memory through progressive image-making. The project confronts the unreliability of memory itself, and raises questions about the role of AI images in fine art.
In 2019, Sephine (formerly called Celebration Ferguson) was arrested for attempted murder. The so-called "victim's" injuries amounted to a bite mark and scratch marks on his shoulder. Bail was set at $500,000—an impossible figure for a college student. Endlessly awaiting trial, Sephine spent nearly a year in Todd Road Jail in Ventura County, simply because she couldn't afford to buy her freedom.
When Covid hit in 2020, Sephine's case was brought up for early review, and all charges were suddenly dropped. There was no trial, no conviction. In all that time in jail, Sephine never once spoke to a judge face-to-face. Yet that time behind bars changed her in ways that don't vanish just because the record now reads "clean."
Unable to photograph her time inside jail, Sephine combines AI imagery, found photographs, video game graphics, screenshots of news reports, handwritten annotations, and original photos to recreate the experience of incarceration. This project is a memoir told through words and images—some real, some interpretive—because the reality of jail is too fragmented, too surreal, to be captured by straightforward documentation.
This project raises critical questions about the relationship between image-making and memory. How do you create images of something that can't be physically photographed? Memory itself is unreliable, prone to gaps, distortions, and emotional overlays, so why shouldn't the images used to reconstruct those memories embrace similar qualities?
The surreal, dreamlike nature of many AI-generated visuals lends itself well to depicting not just what jail looked like, but more importantly, what it felt like. This project also calls attention to the role AI images may play in the near future, especially in the context of representing emotions and ideas instead of a specific part of the physical world.
Through this multi-layered approach, Sephine explores how images meant to represent memory inherently lack authenticity—yet this very inauthenticity can be harnessed to create powerful, emotionally charged works of art.
speaker
Sephine Milan
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