https://tzuenwutheo.com Tzu-En Wu (Theo) Tue, 16 Dec 2025 07:44:24 +0000 https://tzuenwutheo.com en https://tzuenwutheo.com/Tzu_En-Wu-Theo Tue, 20 Sep 2022 19:02:01 +0000 Tzu-En Wu (Theo) https://tzuenwutheo.com/Tzu_En-Wu-Theo <img width="3984" height="2656" width_o="3984" height_o="2656" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/719cb928a540ce6d1ee6d8f183e402a100d266fbc870c08e878fb508374dbcd4/DSC00275.JPG" data-mid="154984135" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/719cb928a540ce6d1ee6d8f183e402a100d266fbc870c08e878fb508374dbcd4/DSC00275.JPG" /> <img width="4042" height="2400" width_o="4042" height_o="2400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/82be24a33e0851c2155e49583318f8f15d1ca1c2ac8bdcc5e7a28559acaf2abe/Wu_Tzuen_03.jpg" data-mid="170377952" border="0" data-scale="89" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/82be24a33e0851c2155e49583318f8f15d1ca1c2ac8bdcc5e7a28559acaf2abe/Wu_Tzuen_03.jpg" /> <img width="4200" height="1821" width_o="4200" height_o="1821" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/63ecd145226bb626ce9e5437fad3a9710f6471b9d1fc0ef0d08297a97b022c5f/Wu_Tzuen_02.jpg" data-mid="170377950" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/63ecd145226bb626ce9e5437fad3a9710f6471b9d1fc0ef0d08297a97b022c5f/Wu_Tzuen_02.jpg" /> <img width="4200" height="1883" width_o="4200" height_o="1883" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/59b1661def5fced598cfaad14477938792778aa7ae5e7cf6b201f0077600d81e/Wu_Tzuen_01.jpg" data-mid="170377949" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/59b1661def5fced598cfaad14477938792778aa7ae5e7cf6b201f0077600d81e/Wu_Tzuen_01.jpg" /> <img width="1525" height="1525" width_o="1525" height_o="1525" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/360e116f86206825c173314a837856a9a7c742c635d93727378e86fc9733184b/One-step-away-screen-shot1.jpg" data-mid="184398548" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/360e116f86206825c173314a837856a9a7c742c635d93727378e86fc9733184b/One-step-away-screen-shot1.jpg" /> https://tzuenwutheo.com/Water-Like-Latent-Walk Fri, 07 Jul 2023 04:09:02 +0000 Tzu-En Wu (Theo) https://tzuenwutheo.com/Water-Like-Latent-Walk &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<img width="1786" height="1786" width_o="1786" height_o="1786" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5be1a6b1d7382bb1b9bbc46c2f12a7386efd36de6b5d377a8d0482a8a74ca595/Screen-Shot-2024-03-31-at-9.09.55-PM.png" data-mid="208386046" border="0" data-scale="55" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5be1a6b1d7382bb1b9bbc46c2f12a7386efd36de6b5d377a8d0482a8a74ca595/Screen-Shot-2024-03-31-at-9.09.55-PM.png" />Water-Like 若水＿Latent Walk 2023Self Trained AI (Style GAN) Generated Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWrAQHOYXPc The project is dedicated to the phenomenon of the irreproducibility of photography. It is associated with water, where a series of lifted Polaroid photos from water sources and actual water samples taken from the same water sources as the Polaroids are displayed. Polaroids and water have a connection, each print has its characteristics, such as spots, streaks, and more, related to the number and size of particles in the water at the time of printing. The project also addresses some topics raised in the article “Photography and Liquid Intelligence”, for example, how in photography liquids are always controlled by people. In these experiments, I was trying to find out how water from different sources influences the Polaroids. The project also comments on the role of water in climate change. Water collection by artists, scientists, and tourists is being compared in this project to show their different understandings and applications. The project also comments on the tourism flow phenomenon. The AI produced film is actually also a part of the series and it is called “Latent Walk” as well. It is a dual meaning title, as it describes my physical wandering through what we believe to be material spaces on this planet we live on (we can’t possibly be in virtual reality right now, can we? Heh.) And of course the actual film is being produced by the AI training itself off of the imagery I recorded and then walking around in the high dimensional latent space it created while learning from those images. The film captures what it “sees” after producing a path. It is a comparison of my physical experience walking through material spaces with the virtual walk through spaces of the AI. https://tzuenwutheo.com/Water-Like-series-_Locations Mon, 01 Apr 2024 01:44:37 +0000 Tzu-En Wu (Theo) https://tzuenwutheo.com/Water-Like-series-_Locations <img width="667" height="1000" width_o="667" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2824fc9a5b00d87fbe3ebbfb3753ed2b85e772e1d9b8f6c6a8b17094ac6f1ede/Wu_Tzuen_5.jpg" data-mid="208243356" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/667/i/2824fc9a5b00d87fbe3ebbfb3753ed2b85e772e1d9b8f6c6a8b17094ac6f1ede/Wu_Tzuen_5.jpg" /> <img width="667" height="1000" width_o="667" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8381f0442b551634ecbb11b1efd9e927951f66137dddc2a8fc7016b2cd680242/Wu_Tzuen_2.jpg" data-mid="208243327" border="0" data-scale="56" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/667/i/8381f0442b551634ecbb11b1efd9e927951f66137dddc2a8fc7016b2cd680242/Wu_Tzuen_2.jpg" /> <img width="667" height="1000" width_o="667" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2ec70687c6fd8e3349c215bcf269c844c771e5453a1b814508184a9f5eeef7b9/Wu_Tzuen_1.jpg" data-mid="208243324" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/667/i/2ec70687c6fd8e3349c215bcf269c844c771e5453a1b814508184a9f5eeef7b9/Wu_Tzuen_1.jpg" /> <img width="667" height="1000" width_o="667" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1f09fe8f3e0b01a5beafc99263bdeac6811a819be62179db7410e0f40a32a244/Wu_Tzuen_4.jpg" data-mid="208243329" border="0" data-scale="56" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/667/i/1f09fe8f3e0b01a5beafc99263bdeac6811a819be62179db7410e0f40a32a244/Wu_Tzuen_4.jpg" /> Water like series 若水&nbsp; 2023-on going Polaroid, Watercolor Paper, Things form the water body The project is dedicated to the phenomenon of the irreproducibility of photography. It is associated with water, where a series of lifted Polaroid photos from water sources and actual water samples taken from the same water sources as the Polaroids are displayed. Polaroids and water have a connection, each print has its characteristics, such as spots, streaks, and more, related to the number and size of particles in the water at the time of printing. The project also addresses some topics raised in the article “Photography and Liquid Intelligence”, for example, how in photography liquids are always controlled by people. In these experiments, I was trying to find out how water from different sources influences the Polaroids. The project also comments on the role of water in climate change. Water collection by artists, scientists, and tourists is being compared in this project to show their different understandings and applications. The project also comments on the tourism flow phenomenon. The AI produced film is actually also a part of the series and it is called “Latent Walk” as well. It is a dual meaning title, as it describes my physical wandering through what we believe to be material spaces on this planet we live on (we can’t possibly be in virtual reality right now, can we? Heh.) And of course the actual film is being produced by the AI training itself off of the imagery I recorded and then walking around in the high dimensional latent space it created while learning from those images. The film captures what it “sees” after producing a path. It is a comparison of my physical experience walking through material spaces with the virtual walk through spaces of the AI. https://tzuenwutheo.com/Water-Like-series-_Water-and-Soil Mon, 08 Dec 2025 16:24:42 +0000 Tzu-En Wu (Theo) https://tzuenwutheo.com/Water-Like-series-_Water-and-Soil <img width="3024" height="4032" width_o="3024" height_o="4032" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/79e6c81013445c6066ea87a8823cfd1a5d535985552cb8d7d6dcc848c8354958/Water-Like-series-Odyssey.jpg" data-mid="241562073" border="0" data-scale="46" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/79e6c81013445c6066ea87a8823cfd1a5d535985552cb8d7d6dcc848c8354958/Water-Like-series-Odyssey.jpg" /> Water-like series 若水_Water and Soil 2023 Water and Soil samples The project is dedicated to the phenomenon of the irreproducibility of photography. It is associated with water, where a series of lifted Polaroid photos from water sources and actual water samples taken from the same water sources as the Polaroids are displayed. Polaroids and water have a connection, each print has its characteristics, such as spots, streaks, and more, related to the number and size of particles in the water at the time of printing. The project also addresses some topics raised in the article “Photography and Liquid Intelligence”, for example, how in photography liquids are always controlled by people. In these experiments, I was trying to find out how water from different sources influences the Polaroids. The project also comments on the role of water in climate change. Water collection by artists, scientists, and tourists is being compared in this project to show their different understandings and applications. The project also comments on the tourism flow phenomenon. The AI produced film is actually also a part of the series and it is called “Latent Walk” as well. It is a dual meaning title, as it describes my physical wandering through what we believe to be material spaces on this planet we live on (we can’t possibly be in virtual reality right now, can we? Heh.) And of course the actual film is being produced by the AI training itself off of the imagery I recorded and then walking around in the high dimensional latent space it created while learning from those images. The film captures what it “sees” after producing a path. It is a comparison of my physical experience walking through material spaces with the virtual walk through spaces of the AI. https://tzuenwutheo.com/What-do-you-see-one-step-away Fri, 03 Mar 2023 04:50:28 +0000 Tzu-En Wu (Theo) https://tzuenwutheo.com/What-do-you-see-one-step-away <img width="1525" height="1525" width_o="1525" height_o="1525" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4001b4ac954aeea21d9a63eadc85c10d8a0afc13db68b5ebe1696b6d5745e9bb/One-step-away-screen-shot1.jpg" data-mid="184398541" border="0" data-scale="53" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4001b4ac954aeea21d9a63eadc85c10d8a0afc13db68b5ebe1696b6d5745e9bb/One-step-away-screen-shot1.jpg" />What do you see?-One step awayself trained AI generated video, Style GAN This self-trained, AI–generated video is a study in the circulation of sight at the Field Museum. The artist’s own photographs of taxidermied animals at the museum were used to train the AI. Informed by John Berger’s text on the animal gaze, the work suggests that the museum display is both an attempt to arrest a particular “look” of the animal, while in fact emptying out the once bidirectional act of seeing between animals and humans. The animals look back and there is no reciprocity. Training an AI model on the artist’s images of dead animals, the work displaces this line of questioning to the experience of an artificial eye. How does an AI see? What does it learn from images of once living, now perpetually unseeing animals? The image data is processed to form a simulation of vision, and through the output of a model “making its own films,” the video simulates the mediation of looking between species, the species and its dead body, and biological vision and computation. The resultant videos circulate within a field of undecidability: museum archive, machine hallucination, the politics of display. In their circulation, the work shows the dislocation of the object of the gaze and sight itself into a process of loss, translation, and re-animation https://tzuenwutheo.com/What-do-you-see-Panoramic-1 Tue, 16 Dec 2025 07:44:24 +0000 Tzu-En Wu (Theo) https://tzuenwutheo.com/What-do-you-see-Panoramic-1 <img width="2575" height="1717" width_o="2575" height_o="1717" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a55c94e61a2da18ab1cba13432943117f9da10654cff9dc000bd887ba5d77bb7/Theo-3.png" data-mid="241852824" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a55c94e61a2da18ab1cba13432943117f9da10654cff9dc000bd887ba5d77bb7/Theo-3.png" />What do you see?-Panoramic 2023Facial reconition software, respberry pie,3D printed deer skull This self-trained, AI–generated video is a study in the circulation of sight at the Field Museum. The artist’s own photographs of taxidermied animals at the museum were used to train the AI. Informed by John Berger’s text on the animal gaze, the work suggests that the museum display is both an attempt to arrest a particular “look” of the animal, while in fact emptying out the once bidirectional act of seeing between animals and humans. The animals look back and there is no reciprocity. Training an AI model on the artist’s images of dead animals, the work displaces this line of questioning to the experience of an artificial eye. How does an AI see? What does it learn from images of once living, now perpetually unseeing animals? The image data is processed to form a simulation of vision, and through the output of a model “making its own films,” the video simulates the mediation of looking between species, the species and its dead body, and biological vision and computation. The resultant videos circulate within a field of undecidability: museum archive, machine hallucination, the politics of display. In their circulation, the work shows the dislocation of the object of the gaze and sight itself into a process of loss, translation, and re-animation https://tzuenwutheo.com/What-do-you-see-180-degree Tue, 20 Sep 2022 19:02:02 +0000 Tzu-En Wu (Theo) https://tzuenwutheo.com/What-do-you-see-180-degree <img width="1772" height="709" width_o="1772" height_o="709" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/94ef5d6a688ac8a26e5374f2e04f99455908155196138adf8cf9ad5ba6324644/L1-1.jpg" data-mid="241852901" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/94ef5d6a688ac8a26e5374f2e04f99455908155196138adf8cf9ad5ba6324644/L1-1.jpg" /> What do you see?-180 degreePhotos in seterioscopes 2021–2022 What do you see?-180 degree (2021–2022) starts from photography as a primarily one-directional act of looking, where vision is configured from a human-centric vantage point, and the subject is always already passivized. The project began from my own experience as a visitor at the Field Museum becoming fixated on the taxidermied animals that seemed to look back at me, and having to confront the impossibility of this looking because they have lost the ability to see forever. The work was first exhibited as an installation of stereoscopes. Each stereoscope houses two photographs, one of the taxidermied animal, the other of the exhibition environment in front of which the animal is placed. The two images, when viewed together through the stereoscope, create a dizzying and in-between viewing experience that both aligns with the perspective of an animal looking out while also rendering that alignment impossible. By emphasizing the collapse of mutual looking in the museum presentation, the installation enacts the subject's visual disempowerment. This exploration of vision continued in a series of works made with AI. I trained an artificial vision model on my own photographs of taxidermied animals to further displace the act of looking away from a biological subject, onto a computational one. Circulating between museum archive, machine hallucination, and reinterpretation, these images and videos ask how vision is translated, deferred, or disarmed once the viewer is no longer human. https://tzuenwutheo.com/Let-s-make-a-deal-T-T Wed, 05 Oct 2022 19:58:24 +0000 Tzu-En Wu (Theo) https://tzuenwutheo.com/Let-s-make-a-deal-T-T <img width="4200" height="1821" width_o="4200" height_o="1821" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/63ecd145226bb626ce9e5437fad3a9710f6471b9d1fc0ef0d08297a97b022c5f/Wu_Tzuen_02.jpg" data-mid="170110052" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/63ecd145226bb626ce9e5437fad3a9710f6471b9d1fc0ef0d08297a97b022c5f/Wu_Tzuen_02.jpg" /><img width="4200" height="1883" width_o="4200" height_o="1883" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/59b1661def5fced598cfaad14477938792778aa7ae5e7cf6b201f0077600d81e/Wu_Tzuen_01.jpg" data-mid="170110154" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/59b1661def5fced598cfaad14477938792778aa7ae5e7cf6b201f0077600d81e/Wu_Tzuen_01.jpg" /><img width="1000" height="668" width_o="1000" height_o="668" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/be9ca7f3c2f3000b06feaec462afcf1068810aee478976b7d461463d8cc915cc/-Tzuen_Wu_3.jpg" data-mid="207096669" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/be9ca7f3c2f3000b06feaec462afcf1068810aee478976b7d461463d8cc915cc/-Tzuen_Wu_3.jpg" /> Let’s make a deal-T/T (Part) 2022-2023Inject print, Phone sized arcrylic&nbsp; In Let’s Make a Deal I address my tumultuous relationship with my traditionalist father. We were both born and raised in Taiwan but we have vastly different views on life. Flash point of our contention was in 2022, when I came out to him as a lesbian. Every section of the project marks a path of rebuilding my relationship with my father, where photography becomes a medium of “currency” for us to reach out to one another. The work consists of five sections and the premise of the project is built on the fact that my father was absent for most of my childhood due to the nature of his work in manufacturing and selling car parts. I had no emotional connection with my father to begin with and that was further complicated when I found out I was a lesbian at a young age. I quickly realized that I was not allowed to voice who I truly was, resulting in further alienation. Let’s Make a Deal is my attempt to cross that distance. The first part of the work hinges on smartphone sized photos pinned to the wall in linear clusters, titled T/T (Telegraphic transfer). These images are of cities around the United States, including Chicago, that my father traveled to for work. By photographing these places, I am following in his steps and searching for places of familiarity that I can share with him. After I send him these photos, I imagine him zooming in and out on the photos after he receives them to more closely examine various details. I use the photos as currency, trading these images for his stories as well as his attention. My father drove me to school every day for twelve years. The car was a space of uneasy silence, suspended between parental care and teenage angst. This covered car door, which is full of photographs fashioned in different textures, points to other possibilities: different kinds of pasts and futures. Like many cities, rivers run through industrial cities my father traveled to on business. A vessel, like a canoe, is a way to journey through those places. My vessel is constructed of fungal mycelia, physically made up of millions of small relationships and connections, with the cultivation of the fungi requiring my care not my manipulation. As the photographs embedded within the vessel are consumed by the mycelia they become part of it; as I work with my friends to grow the vessel we become more a part of each other. In 2022 after I experienced a break up I craved the support of my father. This entailed me coming out to him, and his having to process his new perception of me. In painting a portrait of my father I feel like an archaeologist brushing away the sands of time and unearthing my emotions to share with him. It also allows me the chance to ponder on each of his photographs in more detail, even though we now live on different continents from one another. https://tzuenwutheo.com/Let-s-make-a-deal-The-Vessel Fri, 03 Mar 2023 06:35:02 +0000 Tzu-En Wu (Theo) https://tzuenwutheo.com/Let-s-make-a-deal-The-Vessel <img width="4201" height="3000" width_o="4201" height_o="3000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/56fed600818e43ea3a5ae3eac9ccb8d22a94b2759f7a0cb0fd3e316f4dac425e/Lets-make-a-deal--The-Vessel-The-canoeon-going.jpg" data-mid="170384252" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/56fed600818e43ea3a5ae3eac9ccb8d22a94b2759f7a0cb0fd3e316f4dac425e/Lets-make-a-deal--The-Vessel-The-canoeon-going.jpg" /> Let’s make a deal-The Vessel 2022-23Mycelium, Wooden Structure In Let’s Make a Deal I address my tumultuous relationship with my traditionalist father. We were both born and raised in Taiwan but we have vastly different views on life. Flash point of our contention was in 2022, when I came out to him as a lesbian. Every section of the project marks a path of rebuilding my relationship with my father, where photography becomes a medium of “currency” for us to reach out to one another. The work consists of five sections and the premise of the project is built on the fact that my father was absent for most of my childhood due to the nature of his work in manufacturing and selling car parts. I had no emotional connection with my father to begin with and that was further complicated when I found out I was a lesbian at a young age. I quickly realized that I was not allowed to voice who I truly was, resulting in further alienation. Let’s Make a Deal is my attempt to cross that distance. The first part of the work hinges on smartphone sized photos pinned to the wall in linear clusters, titled T/T (Telegraphic transfer). These images are of cities around the United States, including Chicago, that my father traveled to for work. By photographing these places, I am following in his steps and searching for places of familiarity that I can share with him. After I send him these photos, I imagine him zooming in and out on the photos after he receives them to more closely examine various details. I use the photos as currency, trading these images for his stories as well as his attention. My father drove me to school every day for twelve years. The car was a space of uneasy silence, suspended between parental care and teenage angst. This covered car door, which is full of photographs fashioned in different textures, points to other possibilities: different kinds of pasts and futures. Like many cities, rivers run through industrial cities my father traveled to on business. A vessel, like a canoe, is a way to journey through those places. My vessel is constructed of fungal mycelia, physically made up of millions of small relationships and connections, with the cultivation of the fungi requiring my care not my manipulation. As the photographs embedded within the vessel are consumed by the mycelia they become part of it; as I work with my friends to grow the vessel we become more a part of each other. In 2022 after I experienced a break up I craved the support of my father. This entailed me coming out to him, and his having to process his new perception of me. In painting a portrait of my father I feel like an archaeologist brushing away the sands of time and unearthing my emotions to share with him. It also allows me the chance to ponder on each of his photographs in more detail, even though we now live on different continents from one another. https://tzuenwutheo.com/Let-s-make-a-deal-Intersection Fri, 03 Mar 2023 06:23:25 +0000 Tzu-En Wu (Theo) https://tzuenwutheo.com/Let-s-make-a-deal-Intersection <img width="1000" height="668" width_o="1000" height_o="668" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8edfdd7540f5e11f306efe39b5d3dce0b16487ac377bf88eebea3e53a3410ee1/-Tzuen_Wu_1.jpg" data-mid="207096660" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8edfdd7540f5e11f306efe39b5d3dce0b16487ac377bf88eebea3e53a3410ee1/-Tzuen_Wu_1.jpg" /><img width="1000" height="667" width_o="1000" height_o="667" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2467c3f18a9c1ae7279a3debd5ea3b26798b936ec5ff2d8b1664c05877ba51d8/-Tzuen_Wu_2.jpg" data-mid="207096657" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2467c3f18a9c1ae7279a3debd5ea3b26798b936ec5ff2d8b1664c05877ba51d8/-Tzuen_Wu_2.jpg" /> Let’s make a deal-Intersection 2022-2023Car door,Inject print, Bluetooth speaker In Let’s Make a Deal I address my tumultuous relationship with my traditionalist father. We were both born and raised in Taiwan but we have vastly different views on life. Flash point of our contention was in 2022, when I came out to him as a lesbian. Every section of the project marks a path of rebuilding my relationship with my father, where photography becomes a medium of “currency” for us to reach out to one another. The work consists of five sections and the premise of the project is built on the fact that my father was absent for most of my childhood due to the nature of his work in manufacturing and selling car parts. I had no emotional connection with my father to begin with and that was further complicated when I found out I was a lesbian at a young age. I quickly realized that I was not allowed to voice who I truly was, resulting in further alienation. Let’s Make a Deal is my attempt to cross that distance. The first part of the work hinges on smartphone sized photos pinned to the wall in linear clusters, titled T/T (Telegraphic transfer). These images are of cities around the United States, including Chicago, that my father traveled to for work. By photographing these places, I am following in his steps and searching for places of familiarity that I can share with him. After I send him these photos, I imagine him zooming in and out on the photos after he receives them to more closely examine various details. I use the photos as currency, trading these images for his stories as well as his attention. My father drove me to school every day for twelve years. The car was a space of uneasy silence, suspended between parental care and teenage angst. This covered car door, which is full of photographs fashioned in different textures, points to other possibilities: different kinds of pasts and futures. Like many cities, rivers run through industrial cities my father traveled to on business. A vessel, like a canoe, is a way to journey through those places. My vessel is constructed of fungal mycelia, physically made up of millions of small relationships and connections, with the cultivation of the fungi requiring my care not my manipulation. As the photographs embedded within the vessel are consumed by the mycelia they become part of it; as I work with my friends to grow the vessel we become more a part of each other. In 2022 after I experienced a break up I craved the support of my father. This entailed me coming out to him, and his having to process his new perception of me. In painting a portrait of my father I feel like an archaeologist brushing away the sands of time and unearthing my emotions to share with him. It also allows me the chance to ponder on each of his photographs in more detail, even though we now live on different continents from one another.