About this Event
Computer Vision & Human Perception
A conversation with New York-based Ukrainian artist Lesia Khomenko will celebrate installation of her contemporary painting A Frame from Video Footage of a Kamikaze Drone at the Tree Line (2025) in the first-floor lobby of Amy Gutmann Hall at the University of Pennsylvania. A reception will follow.
Khomenko will discuss drone technology, warfare, and artistic production with Kostas Daniilidis, the Ruth Yalom Stone Professor of Computer Vision at Penn Engineering. The conversation will be moderated by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Inaugural Faculty Director of the Arthur Ross Gallery, and the James and Nan Wagner Farquhar Professor of History of Art in the School of Arts & Sciences. Vijay Kumar, Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering, will give introductory remarks.
The discussion will focus on the rise of drone technology and warfare and the impact on vision and perception, including the war in Ukraine on artistic production in that country and the diaspora of Ukrainian artists around the world.
The acrylic-on-canvas painting by Khomenko, measuring 5.5 feet by 6.5 feet, is on loan from the Collection of Harlan Stone, a 1980 graduate of the College of Arts & Sciences. Stone, a University Trustee, donated $25 million for Amy Gutmann Hall, which opened in 2024.
Sponsored by the Katherine Stein Sachs CW'69 and Keith L. Sachs W'67 Expendable Program Fund, The Penn Art Collection, the Penn Visual Studies Program, Penn Engineering, the Arthur Ross Gallery.
Lesia Khomenko (b. 1980) is a multidisciplinary artist who relocated from Kyiv to New York City after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Khomenko draws on digital images and military footage of the conflict sourced online, transforming them through the language of paint and abstraction. Her painting, A Frame from Video Footage of a Kamikaze Drone at the Tree Line, 2025 is currently on loan from the Collection of Harlan Stone C’80, PAR ’13 and is installed at Amy Gutmann Hall.
Kostas Daniilidis is the Ruth Yalom Stone Professor of Computer and Information Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania whose research interests are in computer vision and robotic perception.
Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw is the James and Nan Wagner Farquhar Professor of the History of Art and the Inaugural Faculty Director of the Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on portraiture and issues of representation in the American context, with an emphasis on the Black experience.
Painting: Lesia Khomenko (Ukrainian, b. 1980), A Frame from Video Footage of a Kamikaze Drone at the Tree Line, 2025, acrylic on canvas, on loan from the Collection of Harlan Stone C'80, PAR'13.
Listen to the artist speaking about the work.
Agenda
🕑: 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Computer Vision & Human Perception Artist Talk
🕑: 06:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Reception with Light Refreshments
Event venue & nearby stays
Amy Gutmann Hall, 3317 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, United States
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