Picture at an Exhibition (2022)

In an alternate reality where people make art through sexual reproduction, a woman gives birth to a painting everyone else thinks is ugly. After giving birth, she hangs the painting up to admire her hard work. She mothers the painting, reading it stories and feeding it. She takes it to the art museum so it can play with the other paintings and win an art contest. She soon realizes no one else sees the beauty in her child, especially not Fabian, the father of the winning art piece. Her friends in the parent support group passive-aggressively mock her painting. Fed up, she runs into the street, only to have her precious baby run over by a car. After the painting is destroyed, she realizes how much she truly loved it. The woman mourns her dead painting at the cemetery when a handsome stranger named Louis catches her eye. Their shared mourning is magnetic as they too have lost a piece of art. They combine inspirations on top of a gravestone, resulting in a pregnancy. Back at the hospital, the woman gives birth once more. Only this time the painting is a blank canvas.