Artwork for The Royal Caribbean Cruise ship, 'Spirit of the Seas'. Conceived during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rafflesia emerged as a luminous tribute to life, beauty, and the longing for wonder. Named after the world’s largest flower, Rafflesia is a suspended, otherworldly sculpture that challenges perception through scale, material, and spatial tension. Its faceted petals — clad in gold leaf and spanning four meters in diameter — catch and refract the changing tones of their surroundings.

Light, shadow, and color shift fluidly across the surface, allowing the piece to come alive in response to its environment. It never looks the same twice. Nature offers an endlessly layered visual language — one that evokes emotion, memory, and a sense of presence. Rafflesia channels that language, not through direct imitation, but through an abstraction of form and sensation. It invites viewers into a moment of pause, of dreamlike disorientation, and of quiet awe.

Created during a time when movement, travel, and contact were suspended, Rafflesia evokes the exoticism and escape that suddenly felt out of reach. It speaks to the human need for discovery and connection — not just outward, but inward. Hovering between the botanical and the celestial, Rafflesia is less a flower than a threshold — a visual portal that hovers gently above, drawing the gaze upward and inward at once.