In Substitutions the confined transit space of the London Underground, firmly associated with the routine anonymity of commuting, is transformed into an abattoir. This collision speaks to the commodification of bodies — not just animal, but human — in contemporary life. It draws attention to how systems of consumption reduce beings to units of flesh or labour, and how public spaces, supposedly civic, are often theatres of silent violence and loss.

One detail reveals itself only gradually: the faded shadow of a figure imprinted on one of the seats. This ghostly presence becomes a quiet witness within the image, a lingering trace of someone once present. The imprint functions as a haunting, a memory scorched into fabric — a spectral protest against the substitution that has taken place. It’s a moment of deep absence, a reminder of what is lost when identity is stripped to the bone.

This work forms part of a broader inquiry into how identity is suspended, erased, or overwritten in contemporary society — and how visual substitutions (objects, commodities etc.) stand in for human presence in spaces we move through daily.