In our increasingly digitized existence, the image is often governed by a strict, invisible order. Algorithms, originating largely from global centers of power, dictate what is deemed beautiful, real or worthy of attention, creating a "visual discipline" that flattens cultural nuance. This technological hegemony risks the creation of a new form of colonialism, where digital tools classify and rewrite identities without consent. However, for Sepideh Takshi, an Iranian artist and researcher based in the UK, the disruption of this order—the glitch—is not a failure, but the beginning of a necessary cultural rebellion.
Takshi’s work operates at the intersection of art, technology and critical theory, utilizing tools such as TouchDesigner, Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to challenge how technology mediates memory and identity. Her practice is rooted in the concept of a "decolonization archive," where she reimagines how cultural narratives that have been obscured or misrepresented by Western history. By embracing "glitch aesthetics," Takshi allows the digital image to escape algorithmic control, returning it to a fluid, personal reality where the body re-emerges from the ruin of digital perfection. This is why her work is relevant to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Reduced Inequalities and Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure.
Excerpt of The Glitch as a Decolonial Gesture by Sepideh Takshi. Video courtesy of the artist.
This philosophy is vividly realized in her project The Glitch as Decolonial Gesture. In this work, Takshi uses the glitch to transform the visual form of errors into a form of language, turning technical malfunction into resistance. As a woman from the Middle East, Takshi notes that she has inherited a history of being "spoken for, spoken over, or silenced entirely" by states and media. In her video works, the intentional silence and visual distortion become a counter-language—a refusal to be interpreted or distilled by machine logic, allowing the glitch to speak in her place.
Excerpt of Decolonization Archive by Sepideh Takshi. Video courtesy of the artist.
Takshi also explores the concept of a "digital double" to reanimate static history. In her work Decolonization Archive, she creates a digital twin of an ancient manuscript featuring butterflies, an often misrepresented insect, a creature described in texts only through vague, folkloric terms that appreciates its aesthetics without doing its real-life physiology and ecology any justice. By overlaying live scientific data onto the manuscript using real-time AI, she does not resolve the ambiguity but rather highlights the tension between "archival opacity" and "algorithmic transparency".
Excerpt of Echoes of a Decolonized Archive by Sepideh Takshi. Video courtesy of the artist.
Similarly, in Echoes of a Decolonized Archive, she reinterprets a fifteenth-century miniature of a battle between the troops of Timur and the Mamluk troops of al-Nasir Faraj, transforming its painted weapons into animation, textures and rhythms. Here, the archival material is no longer a passive mausoleum of the past but a field of active struggle, where historical violence is being shared through a cacophony of sounds and movement. This allows for new possibilities of war remembrance, as the emotions of the past are also being carried through time.
Her commitment to democratizing narrative is further shown in One Thousand and One Nights, a participatory web application reimagining the Persian ancient oral tradition as a survival tool. Takshi’s platform allows every user to become their own Scheherazade, selecting emojis and themes that use AI processes to create new Persian miniature-style visuals. This transforms the user from a passive consumer of these myths into an active author, showing that classic texts are also living, global archives that are forever being rewritten by incumbent powers.
Sepideh Takshi’s art proves that the digital realm does not need to be a reductive space that promotes erasure. In her own words, by celebrating glitches and voicing archival materials, she exposes "colonial taxonomies that were once misnamed and erased," proposing instead a future where technology is a tool for "cultural continuity, translation, and transformation". Her work offers a powerful reminder that even in a world of codes and digits, the human spirit refuses to be compressed into binaries.
Find out more about Sepideh Takshi and her projects on her YouTube channel here or view her portfolio here.