A graphic designer and illustrator interested in the melding of the surreal and the ordinary. My work often explores cultural nostalgia through image-making with the personal directive of capturing —in delight, confusion, shock— a moment in a person’s day in which I have created that emotion. THE HILLS HAVE EARS explores the nature of a fetish and how artists might use their medium to convey their obsessions in plain sight despite social conventions. In this case: the writer Haruki Murakami, and his passion for ears. THE PROJECTION: From just a head with ears to just an ear itself to just a vagina made of ears — the 686 ears mentioned within the span of his works meld until the ordinary ear is indiscernible from the fetishised. THE TAPE: An invasive confrontation between ears. The title comes from the amalgamation of a quote from Murakami’s After Dark —“The walls have ears—and digital cameras.”— and the (thematically unrelated) film, The Hills Have Eyes. Walls have limitations and connotations of privacy, while the opposite can be said of a vast hillscape. Observing the lack of boundaries in sharing one’s intimate fetishes, I swapped the walls for hills to mimic this openness.

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Photo credit: Kat Yu