Mai Nonomura (b. 1998) is part of the Japanese video production company TYO, where she creates still and video works using generative AI. Her AI-generated films are crafted with careful attention not only to the details of the AI art but also to the storyline and its connections.

With a background in archival and documentary photography, Mai studied photography at university, and her work is often rooted in field research.

For her graduation project, she photographed the same locations over three years, using the same technique, to document the construction of an expressway—capturing the relationship between “what once was,” “what is now,” and “what will be.” In her current work, too, she continues to explore the interplay between reality and absence.

However, memory has its limits. Over time, recollections become fragmented, and the images formed in the mind turn into fiction. There are also dreams—visions that cannot be captured in photographs yet remain within us.

In this work, I have created a dream that drifts between existence and non-existence—an image wandering in search of a past that once was but can no longer be fully remembered.