The Wild in Our Mouths began with a simple question: what happens to the words we don’t say? Where do they go? I started to imagine them transforming — the unsent message, the swallowed truth, the hesitation — each finding its own shape, its own body.

The idea that words can take on physical form is not new. In Islamic visual culture, language has often been turned into image — words curved into lions, swans, or horses through zoomorphic calligraphy. I borrow from this tradition but use it to think about the present moment — about how our everyday silences and repressed thoughts might also grow bodies of their own.

Each animal carries something of that silence: a lion holds back fury, a rabbit hides hesitation, a swan carries unspoken grace. These forms are drawn carefully, each shaped by the discipline of thuluth script — a language of precision that I stretch until it almost breaks.

This work is about how feelings and true thoughts behave when we stop  them — how they mutate, slip, and reappear in unexpected ways. It’s about what we keep inside, and how even our quietest moments can have a life of their own.