These works, made in Summer 2026 while recovering from a snapped ankle and broken leg, are the beginning of a body of prints and paintings titled Morbid Symptoms. The work looks at the relationship between labour exploitation and cultural hegemony: how the conditions of capitalist life become embedded in the way we understand ourselves and the world around us. The demands of work, productivity and individual responsibility are presented as common sense, while the structures that produce them become increasingly difficult to grasp.  

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The work responds to the effects of neoliberal capitalism and the erosion of collective security and solidarity. As these structures weaken, the frustrations produced by exploitation and insecurity can be redirected towards one another, while the far right has capitalised on this discontent through nationalist and reactionary politics. In Futurability, Franco Berardi describes how the conditions of contemporary capitalism can make it increasingly difficult to imagine a future beyond the present. We become so accustomed to the political and technological conditions we live under that imagining a different, more effective way of living becomes impossible.

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Gramsci described the consequences of this kind of political deadlock as “morbid symptoms”, the social and political conditions that emerge when the existing order can no longer effectively maintain itself, while no clear alternative has yet taken its place.​