Prompt: Victorian toile wallpaper depicting a photographic portrait of a Swedish woman of mixed background, living in Saint Barthélemy in 1794, 2023–2026

Digitally printed wallpaper with AI-generated images
Pattern Design: Cecilia Pettersson

Toile de Jouy wallpapers from the 18th and 19th centuries often depicted stories and fantasies relating to botany, fruits and animals from Europe’s colonies. These patterns contributed towards a sense of wealth and luxury. This wallpaper was created by Mangalanayagam using AI (Midjourney) to explore how the image of the ‘free Black’ woman in Saint Barthélemy is constructed within contemporary historical narratives. More specifically, she investigates which images of the women on the island AI cannot generate because they are invisible in the sources.

Mangalanayagam has generated wallpapers in the Toile de Jouy style using text prompts, before selecting diffuse details from the background. This shift in focus enables other stories to emerge, similar to an enlargement of a negative where new technologies allow us to see background figures and blurry details. The wallpaper shows what is in the margins, invites new interpretations while also revealing gaps in the source material. Some stories are impossible for AI to visualise because they were never documented or were intentionally deleted.