A-ARTs: Ayo’lamide’s strokes between mind, machine

'The Convergence: The Spark Between Man and Machine' (oil and acrylic on canvas, 200 x 244cm, dated 2026), by Ayo'lamide

By Ola Alowoloke

For different reasons, AI has taken crucial spots across professional fields, art inclusive. In U.K-based Olamide Adesola's latest work, AI plays no role in aiding the creation of her work, but the artist is inspired by the 21st century digital intelligence innovation in someone else’s scientific research.

In the painting titled Convergence: The Spark Between Mind and Machine, the artist whose signature is known as Ayo’lamide brings a theme that explores AI’s growing ability in understanding and interpreting human movement. Inspired by Dr. Tolga Birdal’s research into real-time body-pose estimation – which can support injury recovery and help detect movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease – the work reflects on how humans and machines translate movement into meaningful patterns.

Split from head, to the neck, the central figure in the painting represents the meeting of intuition and calculation, curiosity and code. As these elements come together in a charged moment of alignment, the painting questions what AI systems might learn about humans through people’s body language.

The artist’s visual language interpretation of Dr Birdal’s research also generates the close relationship between artistic rendition of anatomy, either for aesthetics or functional purpose. Interestingly, Ayo’lamide’s work was created as a live painting at the Great Exhibition Road Festival in South Kensington, London, organised by Imperial College London in collaboration with PaintLab. The figure with no clear gender, though appears feminine, is placed against an oval yellow image, demonstrates the firing power of high tech.

Dr. Birdal, whose work deviate from traditional 2D frame-by-frame architectures is an Assistant Professor at Imperial College London and prominent computer vision researcher. His major work includes making foundational contributions to 3D human motion and multi-view body-pose estimation. His research focuses on capturing the temporal, geometric, and combinatorial aspects of human motion to make 3D tracking accurate, physically realistic, and robust enough for deployment.

Recently, Ayo’lamide emerged as a winner in a juried show, Resilience Exhibition, at Hartlepool Art Gallery, paving way for her solo exhibition scheduled for 2027, in the U.K. Beyond her own artistic practice, Ayo’lamide continues to engage with and inspire her immediate community through art. For example, she recently served as a tutor with Horsforth Art Society in Leeds, where she led an art training session for teenagers, sharing her knowledge, creativity and passion with the next generation of young artists.

From live painting and exhibitions to community engagement and creative education, Ayo’lamide continues to explore the powerful intersection of art, technology, movement and human experience.

Ancient diaspora connection to Yoruba name origin