25 things I saw in 2025 that made me want to make art

Caveat: This post is “too long for email” but it’s only because there’s loads of photos. You can click off email to the post to see all of them.

Like the rest of us normal people, I came across beautiful Rama Duwaji through her husband’s very pervasive online presence during his mayoral campaign, and I was instantly enamoured. First of all, she is objectively stunning. And then I found out that she was an artist, too1 so I followed her on Instagram (which I know I said I wanted to quit, but look! This is why it’s so hard for me personally to leave the app.2) and one of the things I actually look forward to seeing is the monthly round-up she does of the things she has seen that has made her want to make art. So, that’s what I’m doing now, except I’m doing a round-up from last year because I saw some really cool shit last year, truth be fucking told.

This was difficult and obviously, by no means an exhaustive list. I just answered a couple of interview questions for an amazing creative platform3 and one of them was about sustaining a creative practice. Perhaps this isn’t like, such a revolutionary idea, but I realised that I hadn’t been taking stock of the beautiful things I had been seeing and experiencing beyond taking photos to file away “for later” and then never coming back to them. For a person with such a slow pace for living, I really do not reflect enough. Not in this manner anyway.

Anyway: I think a creative practice needs to be fed. And this needs to be digested and processed. I do the “eating” a fair bit, but I just don’t… ruminate enough. It’s like saving Instagram posts or a sky-high TBR pile or saving articles on Pocket back in the day. Something piques your interest enough to be saved, but for later. No more!

For transparency, I started this post in January. It is almost the end of February, but, you know… baby steps. A lot has happened in the last couple of months (more on that later, as in tomorrow), so please excuse my procrastination.

Saw this while walking home from a trip to Jackson’s Art.

Also in my October favourites post.

I haven’t photographed it and it’s in London, so I’ll leave this here for now:

While making this, I kept finding stuff I wanted to put in the list but even 25 is too much for one letter, I think. I would also like to say that I went to Hong Kong Basel that year, too, and have not included any of the work there. I don’t know why — some have certainly made me feel one type of way or another — but it just felt like I was choosing between children. Also, if you noticed, I didn’t include any reading material or text. Like I said, baby steps. I think I’d like to keep this “series” going.

I would love to see cool stuff that have inspired you lately, in one way or another. This is an exercise in paying attention and digesting things instead of moving on to another thing. Kind of slowing down, and truly incorporating something into my life. Making something beautiful less fleeting, maybe.