A Journey of Discovery
My years of travel became the roots of my artistic practice — a journey that shaped not only how I see the world but how I express it. I spent two years moving through Southeast Asia, teaching English in Vietnam and helping to build a small community project deep in the Cambodian jungle, although the reality of these projects quickly became clear to me that they were a way of exploiting culture as a way of profit gain. That being said, the connections I made with both locals and travellers was fleeting yet unforgettable, my days were filled with moments of connection — shared meals, laughter, and conversations that crossed languages. I spent days and nights spent writing, sketching, and photographing whatever I could feeling. overwhelmed and constantly stimulated by the rich culture, history and beauty I was continuously imbedded in. Many of those journals and photographs were eventually lost in the chaos of constant movement, yet what remained was something more lasting: a sensitivity to impermanence, to the way memory and experience shift and fade.
Those years were the seed that grew into my artistic practice as it is today. Habitat is a body of work that acts as both a travel journal and a reflection on belonging. The series weaves together drawings, sculptures, photographs, and paintings to explore what it means to build a sense of home while always being in motion both internally and out in the world. As I moved through unfamiliar places, I was introduced to countless cultural traditions and ways of living that challenged my own understanding of normality and the way of life that I had been struggling to intergrate with here in Britain.
I began to notice the accelerating changes around me — cities expanding, rural communities shrinking, local crafts and customs being replaced by the demands of tourism and foreign investment. Watching this transformation, especially the ways in which beauty and culture were commodified and displaced, awakened my awareness of how colonial histories, capitalism, and climate change intertwine to reshape the unseen corners of the world.
Throughout it all, I often felt suspended between worlds — not fully belonging in Britain, yet never entirely at home elsewhere. That quiet in-between space became both my subject and my language. It continues to guide my work today, as I explore the nuances of diaspora, memory, and the fragile threads that connect us to place and to one another.
