Not On Display

Medium: Digital illustration
Print: Archival pigment print on 250gsm smooth coated stock
Dimensions (framed): 42.3 × 59.7 × 2.2 cm (A2)
Year: 2025

She's part of the terrain. Built- in.

The ground doesn't question her.
The animals move through her space.
The sun adjusts its reach.

What sees her isn't looking.

—————————————————-

This piece started with a story I heard about Blaschko lines — the invisible patterns that every human body has, traces of cellular migration written into our skin.

Supposedly, some animals — cats, tigers, certain primates — could see these lines with their own eyes. Like they could sense the invisible maps on us that we can't see ourselves.

I later found out it wasn't true and animals can't actually see these lines, but by then, the image had already rooted itself in me:

the idea that some patterns, some truths, are too old, too quiet, or too real for human eyes to catch.

In this piece, the woman isn't pretending to belong.
She already does — written into the land, patterned into the wild alongside the tigers.

It's the tourists. The outsiders who don't see it.

They look at her like something strange, something to be captured and consumed.

She's not inviting their gaze.

She doesn't allow to be seen through someone else's lens.
She knows what exists beyond it.
What existed long before it.

Belonging isn't proven.
It's engraved and remembered.