Let’s Just Be Friends

“A person aimlessly producing their art, only to be sidelined and consumed.”

A woman, her face painted in a fractured Picasso-inspired mask, sits beside a broken printer—its innards scorched, overworked, and stuffed with discarded paper. She engages with it not as a machine, but as something once alive. She claws at it. Cries beside it. Performs for it. Crumples the art it produced, then claims it as her own. This is not just a visual metaphor for emotional burnout, but a layered portrayal of how artists—and people—are often used up, piece by piece, under the guise of connection.

This concept wrestles with the erosion of authenticity inside transactional friendships and the emotional toll of constantly giving more than is ever returned. What remains is a warped exchange: one person performs, the other consumes.