Acrylic and oil on linen

727×610 mm

Part of PRICE-LESS | Tales from the Port, on view at Koganecho Site A Gallery

I couldn’t stop thinking about a jar of dried seahorses I once came across. They are sold as medicine, aphrodisiacs, and symbols of virility. Seahorses are one of the few animals where males carry the pregnancy, yet they are marketed to reinforce conventional ideas of masculinity.

That contradiction opened up something much larger. So much of gay male life revolves around the pursuit of an ideal version of ourselves. Bigger. Stronger. Younger. More masculine. More desirable. Chasing beauty, status, the next high, validation, convinced that the next thing will finally make us enough.

This piece slowly filled with symbols of those pursuits. The oversized jar promises abundance but also confinement. The poppy hints at addiction, not only to substances, but to desire itself. The bottle of fibre drink is a quiet nod to a reality many gay men will recognise: the rituals, preparations, and invisible labour that intimacy sometimes demands. The Onaga (尾長), very common in the Tokyo metropolis, takes its name from its remarkably long tail. Famous for its attraction to shiny objects, it became an accomplice in this story, endlessly collecting beauty, desire, and symbols of status.

And then there are the seahorses themselves. Dried, preserved, categorised, and priced. They have become objects of consumption, stripped of the remarkable lives they once lived. The jar protects them, but it also traps them.

It’s not a condemnation of queer culture. This piece is a reflection on desire itself: how easily it becomes entangled with consumption, performance, and the endless search for validation. We collect beautiful things, beautiful bodies, beautiful moments, hoping they will make us feel complete. Sometimes we become collectors of ourselves. Sometimes we become the specimens inside the jar.