Isaac Soh Fujita Howell, Stray Dog

Isaac Soh Fujita Howell

Stray Dog, 2024

watercolor and pen on paper (framed)

26 × 29.85 cm (10 ¼ × 11 ¾ inches)

Isaac Soh Fujita Howell focuses more directly on ideas around labor and self-formulation. In reflecting on these themes, he often referred to Henri Lefebvre’s analysis of modern capitalism explored in his renowned text, ‘Critique of Everyday Life’. Capitalist attitudes towards hyper-productivity and self-optimization have reduced the human being to a mechanical appendage of a larger labor apparatus. Under duress, we compromise our humanity for the sake of having enough food to eat, clothes to wear, a roof to live under – staying alive. Through the ennui of the everyday, our wandering eyes watch seemingly exceptional individuals living lives more fully realized than our own.