This AI-collaborative series aims to expose a profound parallel between two forms of cultural erasure: the dismissal of women's bodily experiences and the historical devaluation of textile arts as mere "craft."

When I prompt AI models to generate images of cesarean scars, stretch marks, and the physical marks of motherhood, they frequently return fabric and clothing instead of flesh. Surgical wounds become frayed seams, postpartum bodies are rendered as torn cloth and loose threads, the scarred aftermath of birth transforms into worn textiles and unraveling garments. This algorithmic confusion is not a failure but a revelation.

The machine vision mirrors centuries of patriarchal seeing. Just as embroidery, weaving, and needlework have been relegated to the domestic sphere and denied status as "high art," so too have the marks and transformations of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum recovery been dismissed as private matters unworthy of serious attention or representation.

These images exist in the liminal space between documentation and hallucination, between what I asked for and what the algorithm could comprehend. The AI model's insistence on seeing fabric where there should be flesh becomes a metaphor for how women's corporeal realities have been consistently misread, aestheticized, and diminished. The delicate lace trims and gauze bandages that appear in these works oscillate between tenderness and violence—both binding and wound, both adornment and injury.

By working with rather than against the model's biases, I make visible the threads that connect these two dismissals. The "women's work" of textile creation and the "women's work" of bearing children are equally devalued and hidden by a culture that looks away.

artist: Danielle King | medium: 4096 × 4096 PNG | minted April 2026