Inspired by the Artist’s experience of early motherhood, MAMA uses bespoke AI models to generate hypnotic imagery that conflates the bodies of mother and child. Maclean is drawn to the AI model’s lack of respect for physical reality, finding it true to the unsettling and at times psychedelic hybridity of early motherhood.

The work critiques the gendered norms of motherhood - pink, blue, ribbons, and bows - as well as the AI models’ own bias towards reproducing white and youthful bodies. MAMA pushes these visions of ‘beauty’ and feminine serenity to the point that they morph into an ugly, churning, uneasy reflection of the violence implicit in these standards.

This project sits within Maclean’s broader multimedia practice, which spans film, virtual reality, painting, and sculpture. She orchestrates garish, fantastical narratives, opulent stagings that function as satirical parodies of politics and pop culture. Her work probes digitisation, social media performance, gender roles, and capitalist spectacle, building immersive environments wherein the borders between two-dimensional image, fictional space, and lived reality collapse.