EXHIBITION STATEMENT
Margus Veisveer
Setos Teaching the Seto Language to AI
15th June – 31th August 2025
In Setos Teaching the Seto Language to AI, Veisveer presents a powerful, multi-layered vision of cultural continuity in the age of artificial intelligence. This is not a scene from the past, nor a memory of vanishing traditions—it is a moment that has not yet happened: a luminous Seto summer evening where heritage meets the future on its own terms.
At the heart of the composition are Seto women in traditional dress, confidently engaged in the act of teaching. Surrounded by the symbols of Seto culture—linen, silver, clay—they are not preserving knowledge for safekeeping; they are transmitting it forward. A laptop sits on the table not as an intruder, but as a pupil. Artificial intelligence is not guiding them—they are guiding it.
This vision reframes the relationship between indigenous culture and advanced technology. The Setos are not passive observers of digital transformation, nor are they adapting in reaction to external change. They are active participants, choosing to give their language, their worldview, and their voice to the future by encoding it into the systems that will shape tomorrow’s reality.
There is no tension in the scene—only intention. These women are not fearing loss, but enacting preservation. Not asking permission, but asserting presence. In doing so, the painting affirms a deep truth: that the survival of a culture in the digital age does not depend on volume, but on action. No one will teach the Seto language to artificial intelligence—unless the Setos do so themselves.
Through this work, Veisveer imagines what self-determined cultural transmission can look like in the 21st century: not folkloric or fragile, but assertive, visionary, and alive. The future here is not abstract—it has a location, a language, and a people who speak it.