An artist intervention by Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert at the exhibition DIGITOPIA @ the Museum of Work, Norrköping, Sweden

Opening: June 3rd 2026

Duration: June 3rd – July 31st 2026

https://www.arbetetsmuseum.se/utstallning/digitopia/

“23% Complete” is an installation of cross-stitched embroideries that raises questions about artificial intelligence (AI), image generation, and its environmental effects.

The exhibition has two main parts. Part A consists of six cross‑stitched embroideries of natural landscapes produced between the 1950s and 1980s and sourced from Swedish second‑hand shops. Bright green text is printed on the glass of each framed embroidery to identify the depicted objects. The installation makes visible hidden similarities between these cross-stitching embroideries and today’s AI-generated imagery. Like commercial cross-stitch patterns, text-to-image AI generative platforms “cross-stitch” synthetic, and often kitsch, images using “second-hand” material.

Part B consists of two newly produced embroideries. To create the images, I used the generative AI programme Midjourney with the prompt: “Imagine a landscape 100 years from now, shaped by the long‑term environmental impact of artificial intelligence.” The final works do not visualise the future as the prompt suggests. Instead, they capture the fleeting work‑in‑progress of Midjourney’s image‑generation process. The embroideries thus become abstract images that visualize the workings of the latent space.

Note: this work was conceived and produced during my Moa Martinson Visiting Professorship at the University of Linköping (2025-2026).