Artist Statement - "Societal Labeling - Mimi"

I know the loneliness of societal labeling. I have been named mother,

wife, widow, grandmother—titles that shaped me but also tried to con-

tain me. Each change brought a sense of unease: a picture of how the

world thinks I should appear that rarely matches how I feel. It takes

time to inhabit a new title. In that liminal space, we can feel unmoored,

searching for who we are while the world decides for us.

Becoming a grandmother was both profound and full of joy—yet I strug-

gled with how strangers respond when they hear the word. It arrives

heavy with age, invisibility, and expectation—ideas that do not fit how

I live or see myself.

Curious, I asked artificial intelligence to show me a grandmother in

2025. It returned solitary women: faces in shadow, stripped of context,

surrounded by silence—implying loneliness. But being a grandmother

is not inherently lonely. It carries love, lineage, belonging. What the

machine revealed was cultural bias made visible. AI learns from the

images and stories we create; its portraits expose how older women

are imagined once they move beyond youth and motherhood: isolated,

reduced, invisible. It reveals a collective blind spot—the way society

quietly erases women when their family roles shift or end.

I chose a different path. I chose to be called Mimi in this new role —a

name without the weight of age or heaviness. It feels alive, playful, and

unburdened. It refuses to box me in.