Womb Wetware and Motherhood As Medium
Hybrid Panel Discussion and Onsite Art Exhibit
Artists: Yoon Chung Han, Jiabao Li, Lauren Lee McCarthy, and Sputniko!
Thursday, August 6, 2026
Art event: TIAT Gallery, 151 Powell St, San Francisco, CA 94102
Reviewed by Anna M. Hennessey, PhD
Hybrid Panel Discussion and Onsite Art Exhibit
Artists: Yoon Chung Han, Jiabao Li, Lauren Lee McCarthy, and Sputniko!
Thursday, August 6, 2026
Art event: TIAT Gallery, 151 Powell St, San Francisco, CA 94102
Reviewed by Anna M. Hennessey, PhD
Image from "Motherhood as Panel" Discussion, Artists present through Zoom from left to right: Sputniko! and Lauren Lee McCarthy; Artists Onsite from left to right: Yoon Chung Han and Jiabao Li.
On Thursday, August 6, 2026, San Francisco’s TIAT gallery on Powell Street featured a four-artist panel discussion titled “Motherhood as Medium,” which explored the intersection of pregnancy, birth, technology, reproduction, and mothering. The TIAT (The Intersection of Art and Technology) also currently houses Womb Wetware, artist Jiabao Li’s solo exhibition, and Li joined fellow artists and professors Lauren Lee McCarthy, Sputniko! and Yoon Chung Han in the hybrid panel event. Han and Li were present in person while McCarthy and Sputniko! joined through Zoom. Through shared video and imagery, the artists offered audience members a look at their latest work, while visitors had access to Li’s work onsite.
During the discussion, the artists grappled with themes such as the underrepresentation of pregnancy and birth, both in the artworld and more broadly in society’s collective approach to pregnancy, birth and the human experience. They spoke about issues such as control versus care, with the idea that “care” and increased monitoring in pregnancy can actually mean surveillance and a loss of autonomy; as well as the topic of an invisibility of women’s health issues in discourse surrounding tech and design. The artists noted that pregnancy and motherhood are often dismissed as separate from what might be considered “serious” artmaking. In reality, these parts of life are often inseparable for artist-mothers and artist-parents, reshaping an artist’s relationship to time, identity, and work. Art can make the experiences and thoughts about pregnancy and motherhood more visible to our cultures and to the world.
Speaking through Zoom, Lauren Lee McCarthy, an artist and professor at UCLA Design Media Arts first presented Surrogate, her interactive performance and app-based project related to surrogacy. Through the project, McCarthy acted as a remote control “surrogate,” giving another person live data access to her body and daily life during a proposed pregnancy. These outside people became collaborators, with Lee allowing them the power to make decisions on her behalf, including what to eat, when to sleep, what supplements to take, and even what to do for fun. The project, which evolved over a few years and developed into a series of videos, explores the tension between whose body the surrogate’s body technically belongs to versus who holds decision-making power. McCarthy’s work also grew out of her long-standing interest in surveillance, control, and consent.
Sputniko! (Hiromi Ozaki), a British-Japanese artist who is also a professor, filmmaker and speculative designer discussed some of her work, including Menstruation Machine and Menstualverse. These projects attempt to normalize the bleeding of menstruation, which is a topic that Sputniko has worked on from the time of her early art career to her current work as a health-tech entrepreneur. The artist has for years tried to make menstruation and women’s health visible and discussable. Menstruation Machine is a wearable device that allows people who do not menstruate to experience simulated pain and bleeding. This part of the project is paired with a video following a fictional character, Takashi, who wears the machine around Tokyo. Sputniko’s video went viral and sparked wider conversation about menstrual taboo.
An extension of Sputniko’s ideas on menstruation evolved into virtual/avatar spaces and designing menstruation-simulating wearables for a metaverse platform. The platform initially banned the wearables as inappropriate, then agreed to allow them only if the artist blurred images of blood. Sputniko found this exchange to be telling about how open society really is on the topic of menstruation, which is still taboo. Sputniko’s art on menstruation led to work with a women's health platform for corporate Japan that provides education and healthcare access to employees and covers other issues such as contraception, fertility treatment, and menopause. The company was launched with the aim of supporting Japan’s push toward more women in leadership roles by addressing gaps in workplace health support.
Present in the TIAT studio, installation artist and professor Yoon Chung Han next discussed her Dreaming Babies project. Based on her own IVF experience, the project explores the topics of IVF, chromosomes, and genetic screening, examining what it means to know so much about a potential child before birth. Han created 23 speculative embryo/chromosome characters (one for each human chromosome). She gave each of these characters a gender-neutral Korean name, as well as a short backstory and associated traits or conditions linked to that chromosome. The artist reframed chromosomal variation not as deficiency but as difference or even a superpower. An interactive installation artist, Han’s Dreaming Babies incorporates AI where visitors can interact with and “talk to” these chromosome characters, which respond in the voice of their fictional persona. Han also examines how although genetic technology lets us analyze and select embryos with increasing precision, childbirth and child-rearing are deeply private and personal matters. Thus, how can we use the technology responsibly?
Finally, Jiabao Li presented in person on her exhibition Womb Wetware. Li’s work, which includes several projects examining the intersection of pregnancy, motherhood, and technology, is on display in the accompanying exhibition at the TIAT. Artworks that she spoke about and which were available to audience members included Li’s Super Mom Training Gym, a video game that she made when she was nine months pregnant by using a 3D body scan of herself as the player character. The game satirizes societal pressure on mothers to appear effortlessly capable, or superhuman, while they are pregnant. In reality, Li talked about how she could barely bend down to tie her shoes when she was in her third trimester. But in the game, her pregnant self can jump, leap and flip. Li also discussed AI Mom, her interactive piece available onsite where visitors choose and converse with an AI mother. The piece, which includes tone sliders, allows spectators the opportunity to choose the type of mom they would like to hear speaking. Li's Rock Womb, Lotus Womb, also available to view onsite, is a very different type of piece, comprising a series of small figurines through which the artist weaves mythological themes related to virgin births, miraculous conceptions and pregnancies across cultures. These connect ancient ideas of reproduction without the body to today’s biotech ambitions related to pregnancy and birth.
Jiabao Li’s Womb Wetware exhibit is on view at the TIAT through August 22nd. More images from the show are available below. For more information on the artists, see their individual websites: Yoon Chung Han, Jiabao Li, Lauren Lee McCarthy, and Sputniko!
On Thursday, August 6, 2026, San Francisco’s TIAT gallery on Powell Street featured a four-artist panel discussion titled “Motherhood as Medium,” which explored the intersection of pregnancy, birth, technology, reproduction, and mothering. The TIAT (The Intersection of Art and Technology) also currently houses Womb Wetware, artist Jiabao Li’s solo exhibition, and Li joined fellow artists and professors Lauren Lee McCarthy, Sputniko! and Yoon Chung Han in the hybrid panel event. Han and Li were present in person while McCarthy and Sputniko! joined through Zoom. Through shared video and imagery, the artists offered audience members a look at their latest work, while visitors had access to Li’s work onsite.
During the discussion, the artists grappled with themes such as the underrepresentation of pregnancy and birth, both in the artworld and more broadly in society’s collective approach to pregnancy, birth and the human experience. They spoke about issues such as control versus care, with the idea that “care” and increased monitoring in pregnancy can actually mean surveillance and a loss of autonomy; as well as the topic of an invisibility of women’s health issues in discourse surrounding tech and design. The artists noted that pregnancy and motherhood are often dismissed as separate from what might be considered “serious” artmaking. In reality, these parts of life are often inseparable for artist-mothers and artist-parents, reshaping an artist’s relationship to time, identity, and work. Art can make the experiences and thoughts about pregnancy and motherhood more visible to our cultures and to the world.
Speaking through Zoom, Lauren Lee McCarthy, an artist and professor at UCLA Design Media Arts first presented Surrogate, her interactive performance and app-based project related to surrogacy. Through the project, McCarthy acted as a remote control “surrogate,” giving another person live data access to her body and daily life during a proposed pregnancy. These outside people became collaborators, with Lee allowing them the power to make decisions on her behalf, including what to eat, when to sleep, what supplements to take, and even what to do for fun. The project, which evolved over a few years and developed into a series of videos, explores the tension between whose body the surrogate’s body technically belongs to versus who holds decision-making power. McCarthy’s work also grew out of her long-standing interest in surveillance, control, and consent.
Sputniko! (Hiromi Ozaki), a British-Japanese artist who is also a professor, filmmaker and speculative designer discussed some of her work, including Menstruation Machine and Menstualverse. These projects attempt to normalize the bleeding of menstruation, which is a topic that Sputniko has worked on from the time of her early art career to her current work as a health-tech entrepreneur. The artist has for years tried to make menstruation and women’s health visible and discussable. Menstruation Machine is a wearable device that allows people who do not menstruate to experience simulated pain and bleeding. This part of the project is paired with a video following a fictional character, Takashi, who wears the machine around Tokyo. Sputniko’s video went viral and sparked wider conversation about menstrual taboo.
An extension of Sputniko’s ideas on menstruation evolved into virtual/avatar spaces and designing menstruation-simulating wearables for a metaverse platform. The platform initially banned the wearables as inappropriate, then agreed to allow them only if the artist blurred images of blood. Sputniko found this exchange to be telling about how open society really is on the topic of menstruation, which is still taboo. Sputniko’s art on menstruation led to work with a women's health platform for corporate Japan that provides education and healthcare access to employees and covers other issues such as contraception, fertility treatment, and menopause. The company was launched with the aim of supporting Japan’s push toward more women in leadership roles by addressing gaps in workplace health support.
Present in the TIAT studio, installation artist and professor Yoon Chung Han next discussed her Dreaming Babies project. Based on her own IVF experience, the project explores the topics of IVF, chromosomes, and genetic screening, examining what it means to know so much about a potential child before birth. Han created 23 speculative embryo/chromosome characters (one for each human chromosome). She gave each of these characters a gender-neutral Korean name, as well as a short backstory and associated traits or conditions linked to that chromosome. The artist reframed chromosomal variation not as deficiency but as difference or even a superpower. An interactive installation artist, Han’s Dreaming Babies incorporates AI where visitors can interact with and “talk to” these chromosome characters, which respond in the voice of their fictional persona. Han also examines how although genetic technology lets us analyze and select embryos with increasing precision, childbirth and child-rearing are deeply private and personal matters. Thus, how can we use the technology responsibly?
Finally, Jiabao Li presented in person on her exhibition Womb Wetware. Li’s work, which includes several projects examining the intersection of pregnancy, motherhood, and technology, is on display in the accompanying exhibition at the TIAT. Artworks that she spoke about and which were available to audience members included Li’s Super Mom Training Gym, a video game that she made when she was nine months pregnant by using a 3D body scan of herself as the player character. The game satirizes societal pressure on mothers to appear effortlessly capable, or superhuman, while they are pregnant. In reality, Li talked about how she could barely bend down to tie her shoes when she was in her third trimester. But in the game, her pregnant self can jump, leap and flip. Li also discussed AI Mom, her interactive piece available onsite where visitors choose and converse with an AI mother. The piece, which includes tone sliders, allows spectators the opportunity to choose the type of mom they would like to hear speaking. Li's Rock Womb, Lotus Womb, also available to view onsite, is a very different type of piece, comprising a series of small figurines through which the artist weaves mythological themes related to virgin births, miraculous conceptions and pregnancies across cultures. These connect ancient ideas of reproduction without the body to today’s biotech ambitions related to pregnancy and birth.
Jiabao Li’s Womb Wetware exhibit is on view at the TIAT through August 22nd. More images from the show are available below. For more information on the artists, see their individual websites: Yoon Chung Han, Jiabao Li, Lauren Lee McCarthy, and Sputniko!
Images from Jiabao Li's 2026 Womb Wetware exhibit at San Francisco's TIAT Gallery, left to right:
4D Baby, Super Mom Training Gym, AI Mom, and Motherboard.
4D Baby, Super Mom Training Gym, AI Mom, and Motherboard.
Anna M. Hennessey, PhD is a San Francisco-based writer, artist, scholar, and mother. She is the author of many publications on the topics of pregnancy and birth in the arts and humanities. Her books include Imagery, Ritual, and Birth: Ontology Between the Sacred and the Secular (2018), and Visualizing Birth (2025). Her artworks include the Rebirth Tunnel Immersive Art Installation and Re-Conception Pods.
Date of Review: August 11, 2026
How to cite this review:
Hennessey, Anna M. Review of Womb Wetware and Motherhood as Medium. Hybrid Discussion Panel and Onsite Art Exhibition: Yoon Chung Han, Jaibao Li, Lauren Lee McCarthy, and Sputniko!. TIAT Gallery, San Francisco. August 6, 2026. Society for the Study of Pregnancy and Birth Reviews, August 2026. https://www.ssprb.org/book-review-outer-origin.html.
Date of Review: August 11, 2026
How to cite this review:
Hennessey, Anna M. Review of Womb Wetware and Motherhood as Medium. Hybrid Discussion Panel and Onsite Art Exhibition: Yoon Chung Han, Jaibao Li, Lauren Lee McCarthy, and Sputniko!. TIAT Gallery, San Francisco. August 6, 2026. Society for the Study of Pregnancy and Birth Reviews, August 2026. https://www.ssprb.org/book-review-outer-origin.html.