Ausente
Project_In the context of the 44th International Symposium of Contemporary Art of Baie-Saint-Paul, Paolo Almario presents Ausente, an interactive installation confronting the audience with the experience of algorithmic disappearance. A surveillance-style projection displays visitors in real time. Without warning, a person is erased from the frame: to the machine, they have ceased to exist. The work reveals the act of invisibilization as a form of control, exploring the theme of camouflage and concealment through the lens of algorithmic discrimination. Ausente is part of Dyscrimina, a research project on algorithmic biases. During the publicly accessible creation periods, Almario develops his work in dialogue with visitors, presenting the creative process as an integral part of the artistic proposal.
Bio_Born in Florencia (Caquetá), in the Colombian Amazon, Paolo Almario arrived in Quebec in 2011, was granted refugee status in 2015, and obtained Canadian citizenship in 2022. Based in Chicoutimi, he has developed a practice in which digital technologies and robotic systems explore mechanisms of erasure and structures of power. A graduate of Universidad Los Andes (Bogotá), he holds a Master of Arts from the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (2014), where he teaches. His installations deploy machines with programmed movements that alter the works by adding or removing material, embodying impermanence and systemic deconstruction. Recipient of the CALQ Award—Creator of the Year in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, and supported on multiple occasions by the Canada Council for the Arts and the CALQ, he has exhibited in Canada, Colombia, Mexico, France, Italy, Morocco, Belgium, and Thailand. In 2021, he co-founded Ubchihica, a research and creation center for digital arts in Chicoutimi.
Approach_Paolo Almario’s work takes shape through installations in which robotic systems, algorithms, and computer vision directly manipulate physical materials. His machines, programmed to perform ceaseless actions—engraving, erasing, reassembling—transform raw data into evolving works, materializing entropy as a programmed inevitability. These processes, both methodical and irreversible, create a tension between the persistence of the trace and its disappearance. The installation becomes a terrain where surveillance, the erasure of identity, and power asymmetries manifest not through representation, but through the machine’s action on the surface. From one work to the next, a facial recognition mechanism triggers the irreversible removal of material; a robotic plotter alters a portrait over the course of weeks. The visitor, by their mere presence, activates their own disappearance.
