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La traición necesaria, by Mónica Páez

·3 mins
The empty exhibition space, with white walls, large windows and a ceiling projector, that La traición necesaria describes and recreates
The exhibition hall at the Universidad de los Andes that the artwork describes and recreates. Courtesy of Mónica Páez.
Table of Contents

La traición necesaria (The Necessary Betrayal) is an artwork by the Colombian artist Mónica Páez, made in collaboration with Juan David García Arteaga and Daniel Felipe Montenegro, and exhibited on March 11, 2026 in an exhibition hall at the Universidad de los Andes. It questions what happens when we hand over to an AI the task of describing an image, and then ask it to create a new one from that same description.

Artwork page | Video | Mónica Páez

1. About the Artwork #

The piece is inspired by the Italian adage traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor), which invites us to ask how faithful any translation or transcription can really be.

The proposed image is the exhibition space where the artwork is shown. The AI describes it, and from that description it generates a new image, in a gesture that recalls the ouroboros (the serpent that bites its own tail) and the Droste effect (the infinite repetition of an image between two facing mirrors).

Because the generating agent can never return to the original image, what visitors see are inexact copies and representations of the gallery, in real time: a betrayal of the eye speaking to the brain, or perhaps of our belief that the space we see is, in fact, that same place.

2. Texts #

The artwork is accompanied by two texts, both available (in Spanish) on the artwork page:

  • El tipo de seres que somos, by Juan Nicolás Donoso: from medieval theologians to Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty, a reflection on whether words name the essence of things, and on what it means to ask an AI about meaning.
  • La traición necesaria, by Mónica Páez: from the first machine translation experiments of the 1950s to Ted Chiang’s “ChatGPT is a blurry JPEG of the Web”, a reflection on how much information is lost every time a machine translates, describes or recreates.

3. Credits #

  • Artist: Mónica Páez
  • In collaboration with: Juan David García Arteaga and Daniel Felipe Montenegro
  • Text: Juan Nicolás Donoso
  • Video: Tangrama

4. A Note of Gratitude #

La traición necesaria is, first and foremost, Mónica’s work: her idea, her questions about translation and her way of turning a gallery into a mirror of itself. Being invited into her process was a privilege, and I am deeply grateful for her generosity, her trust and her friendship.

I am just as grateful to Juan David García Arteaga, who was also the director of my undergraduate thesis, for everything I keep learning from him and for sharing this collaboration with me. Contributing alongside both of them to bring this piece to life is something I will always carry with me. Thank you, profes.