All Things Through You was conceptualised from my interest in social media, religion and exploring identity. My project explores the devotion to and obsession with social media and the online world from the perspective of a content creator. These topics resonated with me due to my background as a content creator, specifically making videos and livestreams as a VTuber. In projects from previous years, I have also explored themes of mental illness, specifically my struggles with bipolar disorder. For a period of time, being a VTuber and my community was my everything where I put my all into content creation. The life I was living and the person I was becoming felt vastly more real and fulfilling than the existence I held offline. All Things Through You serves as a way to praise my community and retell pivotal moments in my streaming journey but it also critiques the concept of abandoning one’s physical reality in favour of the online world.

All Things Through You is a collection of digital illustrations that have been printed and displayed in alternative ways to artificially mimic stained glass windows. The collection is separated into two series, Portals and Ascension. Portals showcases five illustrations adhered to perspex while Ascension presents three illustrations contained in hand-made LED-backed frames. Notable artists who influenced my project were Athi-Patra Ruga and Bogosi Sekhukhuni. Ruga for his contemporary stained-glass artworks in Interior/Exterior and Sekhukhuni for his work with similar themes including identity, technology, communication and belief.

My work has a recurring motif of hands. have specifically included them as a metaphor for religious hand gestures seen in tapestries, mosaics and notable for my project, stained-glass windows. As for format, the majority of my work is created to fit a 16:9 aspect ratio. When vertical, this is akin to a phone screen and when horizontal, a monitor or screen. This format ties into my themes of being online and the digital world.

Through the unpacking of my themes and creating artworks, what was initially an exploration of para-social relationships pivoted into an introspection and critique of identity and my concept of self. My artworks explore this fragmented identity and put me in the perspective of both a God and a worshiper. Another concept underpinning my work is reality and questioning what can be considered real. I researched The Butterfly Dream written by Zhuangzi, a Daoist parable that contemplates what constitutes reality.The concept behind the project was a “para-reality” where the dual para-social relationship between an online creator and their fanbase was explored and taken to the extreme – a retelling through stained glass of an online utopia that feels more real than reality itself. This is akin to the religious concept of heaven, where a person can be their ideal self in an ideal world. By printing digital artworks, these online experiences become real and physical.