The Pool Near Southside Arts Space in Fort Worth hosted the NAMNAL Exhibition, the city's first art and AI exhibition featuring twenty-two emerging youth artists. The show, which closed May 12, was the culmination of a STEAM-based initiative called NAMNAL (New Age Media – New Age Learning), founded by Sri Lankan American artist and AP art teacher Dhananjaya “DJ” Perera. The exhibition displayed 25 core works reimagined across mediums—from sketches to 3D prints, projection mapping, and embroidery—developed in collaboration with TCU’s College of Fine Arts and UT Dallas’ Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology.
This exhibition matters because it challenges traditional boundaries between human creativity and artificial intelligence, asking who the real artist is when AI can generate art from sketches. It also highlights the untapped potential of youth in Fort Worth and raises critical questions about retaining local creative talent, as several participating students were accepted to elite art schools outside the city. The initiative demonstrates how grassroots, education-driven programs can build a real creative ecosystem by forging partnerships between high schools, universities, and galleries.