HOW TO KEEP A HUMAN

What happens when being cared for becomes being owned? How to Keep a Human is a fictional illustrated handbook for robots, following eight instructions that turn ordinary care into confinement, identity erasure and control. I built a custom Recraft Style from Ivan Bilibin’s folkloric illustrations, using their storybook language to make the cold instructions feel disturbingly familiar. Enormous scarlet-and-gold robots dominate softly colored humans, while the cheerful handbook typography makes each rule more unsettling. The series ends with an open door and a human who no longer tries to leave, asking what acceptance costs when belonging requires giving yourself up.

"Off Duty"

Monsters have errands too.

Off Duty is a series about the things we’re told to fear, caught on their days off. A creature made of mouths waits for its laundry. Something with a vertical mouth eats ramen next to a guy on his phone. A girl with hands in her belly irons a shirt under a bare bulb. They’re grotesque, and also completely ordinary: tired, a bit bored, getting through the day like the rest of us.

Made with Recraft for the Recraft × Contra challenge.