Head Sail "Artwork"

Looks more like a massacre.

How could this happen?

Probably because of a broken batten. It broke and its knife-sharp broken end worked its way out of the batten pocket. When the head sail was then flapping during furling it in, the batten stitched into the sail several times producing those rips.
Here another picture when we laid it out on deck.

The sail maker said that it wouldn't be a problem to repair it. A so called composite sail like this is a bit comparable to a laminated fibre glas hull. The bad part can just be relaminated. So we packed the sail to bring it to the sail loft.