Content Warning: Bugs

2025
Graphic Design
Self initiated Project


In 2025, lanternfly bodies blanketed the streets of New York City — crushed red wings and black remains marking every sidewalk. Encouraged by government messaging to see it, kill it, ‘Smash and Scrape’. NYC Residents responded with striking obedience, turning extermination into a collective, unquestioned act.

This project examines the contradiction between beauty and harm: a visually striking insect deemed worthy of death, and the normalization of cruelty when it is framed as beneficial. Through this tension, I explore how violence becomes acceptable — even aesthetic — under authority.


I documented lanternfly bodies found across the city and translated them into vector illustrations, carefully rendering each insect’s posture in death. By isolating and preserving these moments digitally, the project treats extermination as both record and repetition, emphasizing the quiet violence embedded in everyday compliance.