Hot take: I got my AI art into a local gallery by calling it 'digital collage'

I made this series of portraits with Midjourney that kept getting rejected from online art calls. My friend in Chicago said to just stop calling it AI art and submit it as digital collage instead. I did that for a show at the downtown gallery last month and they accepted three pieces. Has anyone else had to rename their process to get past the gatekeepers?

3 comments

3 Comments

kim.sandra2mo ago

That whole renaming thing is so real. My cousin is a photographer and she started calling her edited photos "digital composites" to get into more serious shows. It's wild how much the label changes how people see the work before they even look at it. The art world can be weirdly stuck on old categories sometimes.

elliotc102mo ago

Honestly makes you wonder what else we're missing just from the name.

the_vera1mo ago

Oh man, that reminds me of the whole "craft" versus "art" fight. I knew a potter who made these amazing, weird sculptural vases. She couldn't get a gallery to touch them until she stopped calling them pottery and started calling them "ceramic sculpture" for her applications. Suddenly she was in a group show. It's the same clay, the same kiln, but one word made it "fine art" instead of a craft fair thing. The labels totally box people in.