‘The Art of Puppetry’, Nature’s Reclaimed Avatars

Art Direction by Surya David White | Photography by Lilli Waters | Costuming by Liam Ramirez

Crafted from discarded construction wood found on the side of the road, these puppets exist at the threshold between nature and human civilisation.

Once abandoned, the raw material, destined for decay and rot, finds new life, reshaped into hybrid beings that blur the lines between the organic and the man-made. In nature, decay is not an end but a transformation—a seed for regrowth. These puppets embody this cycle, escaping their fate as mere building materials to become storytellers of human existence.

Their wooden bodies belong to the forest from which they came, yet they have been carved by human hands and animated to express the emotions, dreams, and contradictions of civilisation. At rest, they are inert fragments of a lost landscape, but when manipulated, they defy physics, reawakening as vessels of imagination. Their existence is one of duality—lifeless matter infused with fleeting motion, nature reclaimed and reimagined.