Private Spaces/Intimate Danger Collection
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Updated: 3 days ago
1 July 2026
TLDR
Content warning: This work is not for everyone.
47 hand-painted narratives expose ordinary everyday spaces designed for safety, privacy, and intimacy as sites of vulnerability and danger. The architecture of vulnerability.
The collection refuses to centre a single demographic as ‘a universal victim’ instead revealing a universal pattern of power.
Architecture is never neutral.
We assume private spaces will keep us safe. Bedroom doors lock. Bathroom stalls close. Car windows tint. Office doors shut for confidential conversations. Security cameras watch. Medical professionals follow protocols. The architecture of privacy is, theoretically, the architecture of protection.
Private Spaces/Intimate Danger emerged from a simple observation: every space where I feel most vulnerable, my bathroom, my car, the office, is designed to be private, even safe. As a person with disability, the same architecture I navigate daily are both necessary routine and potential danger. This collection expands that personal observation into 47 narratives spanning age, gender, ability, class, and sexuality.
Private Spaces/Intimate Danger dismantles 47 private geographies of contemporary life: from morning bathroom routines to overnight flights, from childhood bedrooms to elderly parents' workplaces, from accessible parking structures to luxury yachts, from confessional booths to basement hangouts that parents believe they're supervising.
The collection is structured as a day-in-the-life progression: we wake in childhood bedrooms where monsters don't live under beds, travel through institutional spaces where authority fails its protective mandate, and return home to find that nowhere is truly safe. This work proposes that private spaces are neutral containers that become dangerous or protective based entirely on the occupants.
Each artwork pairs a hand-painted scene with micro-testimony (30-45 words) from multiple perspectives: child, teen, young adult, parent, elderly, victim, witness, perpetrator. Voices are gender-mixed, spanning class and ability, including LGBTQ+ experience and disability lived reality. Two explicit predator voices are included. Not all danger is violent assault. Danger is often engineered blind spots, selective intervention, wilful ignorance, family silence.
The collection refuses to centre a single demographic as ‘a universal victim’ instead revealing a universal pattern of power: educational authority becomes grooming opportunity, family spaces hide intergenerational violence, workplace privacy enables professional exploitation, the same porch that shelters young queer love also conceals family radicalisation.
One of these works emerge from my direct lived experience as a person with disability: the parking structure vulnerability of mid-transfer when ‘help’ arrives; the urgent need to distinguish genuine assistance from opportunistic threat; the awareness that accessibility features are also tactical disadvantages. As a person with disability, I navigate this daily: accessibility features that help me also advertise vulnerability.
I share this disclosure to acknowledge limitation: many of these titles come from research and testimony shared by others. As a 50+ queer artist with disability, I am acutely aware of the politics of representation. I'm aware my work could invite legitimate scrutiny. I am not the ‘expected’ creator of this kind of work especially about gendered violence or child abuse. I choose to engage rather than avoid these topics because silence is a political choice. We can’t forget, some monsters don't live under beds. They live in the same spaces where we are.
The blockchain publication is deliberate: NFT permanence mirrors trauma's permanence. Each piece is individually mintable, allowing collectors to own specific narratives that resonate with their experience while keeping the collection intact as collective testimony. The work refuses to be a finite exhibition that closes; it remains accessible, searchable, shareable. A public record.
Private Spaces/Intimate Danger asks: what does it mean that we recognise these spaces immediately? we're navigating these same sites of risk? That we've learnt the same threat calculations?
Private Spaces/Intimate Danger doesn't offer solutions. It offers recognition: that privacy is not safety, that safety architecture can become a trap, that we can be vulnerable in our sanctuaries, that architecture is not neutral.
The work is political, deliberate, and necessary.
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STORIES: Private Spaces/Intimate Danger is part an ongoing 2026 project exploring intimate human experience through compressed narrative, in the broader STORIES series.