Fractures of Care (2025) is a thought-provoking piece that reimagines Margaret Mead’s concept of the healed femur as the first sign of civilization, using AI to explore care in a post-human world.
Mead’s idea, often cited as a marker of human empathy, suggests that a healed broken femur shows a community cared for the injured, a practice not seen in the animal kingdom where a broken leg typically leads to death.
De Wilde uses this as a starting point, to create AI assisted images (text and image prompts), contrasting it with an ancient, fossilised femur to highlight shifts in care and civilisation. The artwork prompts speculation on AI and robots tending to injuries, possibly as cyborg artifacts, raising debates: does machine care retain civilisation’s depth, or does it risk losing human empathy?
The artworks herald Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, where a bone is thrown in space and turns into a spaceship, symbolizing technological evolution’s dual promise and alienation. This tension is central to understanding De Wilde’s exploration of a post-human future. The AI-generated femur, with its polished perfection -and sometimes gravity-defying pose-, stands as a testament to the capabilities of technology to simulate and perhaps surpass natural processes.
The series offers a lens to imagine a future where embodied AI encounters the broken femur, or maybe it’s a femur of cyborg or new species? This speculative thought reflects broader debates in AI ethics and post-humanism, where the boundaries between human and machine blur (Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, 149-181. New York: Routledge, 1991). Fractures of Care positions itself at the intersection of human intention and machinic interpretation, aligning with discussions in art theory about AI’s role in creativity (Zylinska, Joanna. AI Art: Posthumanism and the Materiality of Machine-Generated Works. Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).
Key Citations
- The Best Care Possible: A Physician’s Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life The Best Care Possible: A Physician’s Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life
- Did Anthropologist Margaret Mead Say the ‘First Sign of Civilization’ Is a Healed Femur? | Snopes.com Did Anthropologist Margaret Mead Say the ‘First Sign of Civilization’ Is a Healed Femur? | Snopes.com
- AI Art: Posthumanism and the Materiality of Machine-Generated Works AI Art: Posthumanism and the Materiality of Machine-Generated Works
- 2001: A Space Odyssey film directed by Stanley Kubrick 2001: A Space Odyssey film directed by Stanley Kubrick
- The Posthuman by Rosi Braidotti The Posthuman by Rosi Braidotti
- A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century
- Contemporary Art and Posthumanism: Redefining Humanity Through Art Contemporary Art and Posthumanism: Redefining Humanity Through Art
Note: Margaret Mead, a renowned anthropologist, is often attributed with the idea that a healed femur in ancient cultures signifies the dawn of civilization, as it implies communal care for the injured, a practice not seen in the animal kingdom where a broken leg typically leads to death (Byock, Ira. The Best Care Possible: A Physician’s Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life. Avery, 2012). While the exact attribution to Mead is debated, with some sources questioning its veracity (Did Anthropologist Margaret Mead Say the ‘First Sign of Civilization’ Is a Healed Femur? | Snopes.com), the concept resonates widely in discussions of human empathy and societal development. De Wilde reinterprets this idea through the lens of AI, using MidJourney, a text-to-image AI tool, to generate a visual representation that bridges past and future.
