NEEDED
Media - Acrylics and red cotton thread on burnt and ripped paper on canvas
Dimensions - 30.5 x 40.5 cm
Price - £3,600
Delivered directly by the artist, by hand, within the UK
NEEDED operates as both portrait and manifesto — a charged homage to the indispensable role of creative minds in a world that simultaneously exploits, romanticises, and endangers them. Inspired by Wisdom K in Rick Owens at the Met Gala, the work transforms a contemporary fashion icon into a mythic figure, part lone outlaw, part sacred offering.
The portrait is rendered on paper that has been deliberately burnt, torn, and distressed, then stitched onto canvas using red cotton thread. This physical intervention is not decorative; it is structural symbolism. The scorched edges evoke survival, sacrifice, and the destructive forces that often shape artists more than nurture them. The ripping recalls both violence and renewal — the moment a surface is broken, a new meaning can enter. The stitching is a salvaging gesture, a declaration that what is fragile can still be held together, but only through deliberate, visible labour.
The chromatic field — acidic greens cut by arterial reds — heightens the tension. The figure stands luminous and ghost-like, as if printed on a weathered Far West “wanted” poster, yet elevated into something ritualistic. The allusion to stretched rabbit skin reinforces the frontier aesthetic: a world where value is constantly negotiated through threat, exposure, and resilience.
In NEEDED, Naïs frames the contemporary creative as both essential and imperilled — a figure whose imaginative force is “wanted” by culture, but whose existence is stitched together in the margins. The portrait becomes a warning, an honouring, and a reclamation all at once.