Sea Monsters

Sea Monsters examines large-scale industrial factory fishing as a contemporary form of monolithic threat. The project focuses on the ecological damage caused by massive Chinese fishing fleets operating in international waters, where entire ecosystems are stripped of life and abandoned once resources are exhausted. These vessels move from region to region, leaving ecological collapse in their wake, a pattern that poses one of the most urgent environmental challenges facing international governance today. The title Sea Monsters draws from medieval cartography, where oceans were filled with illustrated beasts to mark danger and the unknown. In this work, the monster is no longer imagined. Humans have become the dominant force occupying and conquering the map. The visual language of the project is informed by locust swarms, a phenomenon documented for thousands of years as a symbol of total consumption. Historically, swarms have transformed fertile landscapes into barren ground within days, erasing food systems. Like locusts, these fleets operate en masse, overwhelming natural limits and leaving irreversible damage behind. What was once a myth now reflects reality.