A Dick-tator, yes.
A quote from a novel-in-progress, 2026.
beware of a dictator
The dictator sits alone inside a suspended iron cage, dressed in dark formal clothing, reduced to the scale of a figurine or relic. The cage recalls political imprisonment, public spectacle, and the architecture of authoritarian control, yet here the ruler himself becomes the captive. Rather than depicting power as monumental, the work renders it shrunken and fragile. The figure appears trapped not only by the metal bars surrounding him, but by the very system he embodies. In miniature form, the dictator becomes an object of containment, stripped of grandeur and left exposed within his own machinery of fear.
Caged Dictator transforms a utilitarian bathroom into a site of political allegory and psychological tension. Suspended beside the boiler and exposed plumbing, a small iron cage contains a solitary suited figure seated in confinement — diminished, trapped, almost ornamental. At the entrance, a stark warning reads: “BEWARE OF A DICTATOR INSIDE!” The phrase operates ambiguously: as public caution, private confession, and internal reckoning. The exposed pipes, harsh lighting, and improvised materials reinforce a sense of austerity and dysfunction, evoking both bureaucratic decay and carceral space.
At the same time, the caged figure appears strangely fragile, almost absurd, suggesting the paradox at the centre of authoritarian power: its simultaneous brutality and insecurity.
Next project
my scars will speak if I am to remain silent
