Arts Thread

After my placement year out of university in 2023 when I lived abroad in Paris, I experienced a period of time where my body and I were at odds with each other: I was constantly fainting without warning due to stress from moving flats many times and poor eating habits. Seeing the MRI scans of my brain for the first time was like falling in love with my ‘ugly baby’; other people may not appreciate its complexity or see its beauty, but you do. At that moment, I realized just how un-indestructible I'd thought I was - my brain is core to my identity and the key to all the memories and experiences that make me who I am. Most of all, I realized just how little I knew about my internal body. In a bid to make people see the beauty in the unsettling, this became the focus of my graduate collection at Central Saint Martins. A recurring motif throughout my collection are trompe d’œil prints; a play on “all is not what it seems” through printmaking by transforming my imaged brain into floral shapes, real flowers into uncanny-valley non-existent rendered plants with the use of AI, and imaging real flowers under a microscope to create a twist on the classic 'polka dot' print. Existing shapes are thus forced into into a bizarre yet elegant representation of the natural world in a celebration of life’s ever-changing transience. The human body and a garden are not dissimilar – two systems likened by Shakespeare: much as a manicured garden inevitably contains malevolent bugs or weeds hidden in its shade, so may a well-trained body bear both desired fruits of labour and sprout uncontrollable tissues, unexpected wounds and fluids within a supposedly sturdy frame. Special thanks to Preciosa for sponsoring my collection and British luxury accessories brand Elliot Rhodes for their belts. The entire collection is made from upcycled deadstock fabrics and mutitudes of deadstock crystals.