{"id":2104049,"date":"2026-08-20T16:51:03","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T13:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2104049"},"modified":"2026-08-20T16:51:03","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T13:51:03","slug":"walker-art-center-visitors-see-digital-artwork-brand-it-ai-slop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2104049","title":{"rendered":"Walker Art Center Visitors See Digital Artwork, Brand It AI Slop"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Olekan-Jeyifous-Walker-Art-Center-light.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tMinneapolis\u2019s Walker Art Center and the artist Olalekan Jeyifous are refuting accusations by some museum visitors that his work was made using generative AI, reports MPR News. Jeyifous, born in Nigeria and living in New York, is also an architect and designer, and uses some of the digital tools that are often employed in those fields. His first museum solo, \u201cHydricosmic Litanies,\u201d is organized by the Walker\u2019s associate curator for visual arts, Taylor Jasper.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show, which includes video, sculpture, and soundscapes, draws on African diasporic cosmologies in treating topics like colonization, industrialization, and technological advancement as it impacts our relationship to the environment. It also takes inspiration from Ben Okri\u2019s Booker Prize\u2013winning 1991 novel The Famished Road<\/em>, which opens, \u201cIn the beginning there was a river.\u201d The show imagines communities centered on the Mississippi River, which flows through Minneapolis, and the installation echoes a riverbed, with platforms approximating islands.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRivers have long served as lifelines for ecological and cultural balance,\u201d writes the artist in a statement on the Walker\u2019s website, \u201cbut colonization and industrialization disrupted these reciprocal relationships, imposing systems of control and exploitation with lasting effects. This tension informs the exhibition\u2019s materials and forms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tReddit user stvincentstreet posted an \u201cAI slop alert\u201d on August 15, saying they were \u201cdisappointed to see so much AI garbage\u201d in the show, adding, \u201cNowhere in the exhibit did they let guests know that Jeyifous used AI, which feels so shady and wrong.\u201d The visitor\u2019s confusion could be forgiven if, as they claim in the post, an unnamed Walker staffer, unauthorized to speak publicly, \u201cagreed that AI was clearly used,\u201d adding that \u201cI was told even the \u2018sculptures\u2019 in the exhibit were machined from AI-generated 3D models.\u201d Stvincentstreet calls it \u201csickening\u201d that the museum would put such work on display without noting that AI was used to create it. (In an email to ARTnews<\/em>, the museum declined to comment further on the miscommunication.)<\/p>\n

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\u201cOlalekan Jeyifous: Hydricosmic Litanies,\u201d at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.<\/span>Photo by Eric Mueller<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tNot so, says the artist.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor more than two decades, people have asked some version of, \u2018How did you make this?\u2019\u201d Jeyifous told MPR. \u201cThose methods are commonplace within the discipline I emerge from, but less familiar to a general museum audience, so there has always been some uncertainty around how my images and objects are produced and that has followed me from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe artist tells MPR that since so much early AI-generated imagery had the feeling of science fiction and speculative world-building, he suspected that his work might be misunderstood. \u201cAs AI imagery increasingly entered the broader visual culture, I anticipated that people might begin viewing my work through that lens, and even retroactively framing my earlier work as \u2018AI slop,\u2019 which has actually happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSimply prompting images and presenting the results as my artwork is fundamentally at odds with how I\u2019ve always worked,\u201d said Jeyifous.<\/p>\n

\n\tJeyifous has shown his work at prestigious venues such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, and the Guggenheim Bilbao, and his work is in the collections of New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He won the Silver Lion for a promising young participant at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to MPR, Henriette Huldisch, the museum\u2019s chief curator and director of curatorial affairs, acknowledged that the artist\u2019s practice is not necessarily entirely free from any involvement of AI. \u201cHe uses a range of sophisticated software and tools, many of which have AI embedded within them,\u201d she said, while saying that the artworks are never created from simple prompts. According to MPR News, the artist says that \u201che uses AI-assisted software selectively, be that Photoshop or 3D modeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe works extremely iteratively,\u201d Jasper, the show\u2019s curator, told MPR. \u201cEverything goes through multiple stages of reconceptualization, of rendering, of visualization and revisualizing and visualizing again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe museum told MPR that it is planning to add some clarifying text on the issue to the show\u2019s wall text this week.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re listening and we\u2019re learning with our visitors,\u201d Huldisch said, \u201cand we are adding language.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Olekan-Jeyifous-Walker-Art-Center-light.jpg?w=1024″] Minneapolis\u2019s Walker Art Center and the artist Olalekan Jeyifous are refuting accusations by some museum visitors that his work was made using generative AI, reports MPR News. Jeyifous, born in Nigeria and living in New York, is also an architect and designer, and uses some of the digital tools that are often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2104049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2104049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2104049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2104049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2104049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}