Lust explores desire beyond the limits of conventional heterosexual narratives, examining how sexuality has been represented, commodified, censored, celebrated and mythologised across cultures and time.
Constructed from fragments of vintage Thai pornography, advertisements for sex workers and telephone sex lines, pulp erotica, religious imagery and references to queer art history, the work forms a visual archaeology of desire. These once-transgressive materials now appear almost innocent when viewed against the scale and accessibility of contemporary online pornography.
At its centre sits a skull, a reminder that lust, like all the deadly sins, is inseparable from mortality. Desire can generate intimacy and connection, but also obsession, exploitation and control. The imagery deliberately resists a purely heterosexual reading, incorporating references to same-sex desire and the often-overlooked history of queer representation in art, religion and popular culture.
Rather than celebrating or condemning lust, the work asks how societies construct desire, who is permitted to express it, and why certain forms of sexuality are repeatedly hidden, punished or fetishised. Beneath layers of commerce, fantasy and taboo lies a universal human impulse powerful, contradictory and enduring.