dream 008: lily bloom wants you to make a wish
Images by Lily Bloom
Winter is here. As the days get darker, the only guiding light seems to be that which emits from home windows. I’ve been back in London for two days, alone on my walk, and I notice that, albeit cosy, the darkness feels exposing. As people hide inside from the early nights, harbouring the fluorescent, manufactured comfort of a halo glow, we seem to be soaking up more blue light than a sun bed, the screens of our homes as our biggest source of vitamin D - distraction.
Much like great performance art, Lily Bloom’s work forces you to be present. Inside her recent solo exhibition, A Nearby Tower at Season 4 Episode 6 Gallery, I met her in the middle of her queue system of silver-plated chains and wishing wells. Forbidding you from reaching the rest of her work, until you make your way through, the experience felt as though I was waiting to be let into a haunted house, her lenticular portraits waiting for you, like the actors inside. Yet, I realised while waiting in Lily’s queue, there is one certainty which you may not rely on every theme park for: you’re going to get off the ride.
After she took me around the space, we sat on the cold metal bench in the window of the gallery, and let time drift away as we spoke for five hours. Not only was I mesmerised by her work, but Lily’s presence as a creature of humanity. Her nails as long as knives, sat below her pupils were two dots of eyeliner like a biblically accurate angel, and her hair darkest brown, like wet fur framing her. Nonetheless, we delved into talking about grief as an anchor behind many of her works, “I always tell my friends going through breakups, how beautiful an experience it is”, she persuades me, “heartbreak is a privilege, it’s the closest thing you can get to losing someone, and feeling all those emotions, without death.” It seems all too often in our modern world, death and grief surround us, and many have mastered their gaze aversion to it. As many hide, Lily has crafted a world in which you are confronted, hunted down, much like in her favourite film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), with nowhere to run from those feelings.
In the press release by Kevin Purjurer, author of the documentary Disney's FastPass: A Complicated History, he describes in detail the long wait he experienced as a child in Disney’s switchback queues. From “the feel of the rails on my back” to the temperature of the floor as he sat on the ground, waiting in hope for the line to move, Perjurer’s recount of the process feels especially put into context through being present with Crawl Space (2025). Whilst only remembering sporadic elements of main attractions, he concludes it to be “mathematical certainty” as only a few minutes were spent experiencing the ride, in relation to the hours waiting in the queue. Comparable to moments in life, in which we remember those that mould us as people, mostly those we experience day-to-day, are often overlooked, yet make up the majority of our time. “One day we won’t be able to feel anything”, Lily tells me, “and that’s the saddest thing of all”. The uncertainty of whether this is waiting for us at the end? Well, that’s the thrill of waiting in the queue.
In Lily’s previous work, the issue of mortality is presented through the immortalisation of objects: from an axe (Helms Deep, 2024), to a magic 8 ball (Ask Again, 2024) and an ambiguous gazelle figure (Orpheus, 2024), all adorned in soldered spikes. The axe, floating in a barrel of well water next to a single white feather, evokes the use of weapons in ancient cultures, used to accompany the dead in the afterlife. Where flowers are usually placed, Iron Age burials specific to East Yorkshire had rare, brutally heartfelt tributes which became recently known as ‘speared corpses’. A dramatic funeral practice of delicately curating spears and swords into the grave, often to honour a ‘warrior’s death’, enacting protection as they pass into the afterlife. Imagine if Jim Jarmusch directed 300 (2006), then the fresco-esque scene with Gerard Butler’s body, martyred full of arrows, might have taken on a more romantic portrayal as a speared corpse. Maybe it wouldn’t be historically accurate, but for the beauty, it would be worth it.
Heavenly as that may sound, the piece A Well of Endless Wishes For You, 2023, implies a direct visual for dreams coming true. Coins thrown into a water-filled well built from wax and blood, chained to the wall with a heart-shaped lock, perhaps for fear of letting those hopes and fears escape. Wishing wells remain something we may be familiar with in fables and folklore, from gateways to transformative journeys in Frau Holle (1812) by the Brothers Grimm, to more modern re-interpretations in Tim Burton’s Coraline (2009). However, these aren’t the typical examples of throwing coins to have wishes granted; the wells act as portals where the flesh and soul of the protagonists are put to the test to find wisdom. One of the last, real remaining wells of England includes that of Mother Shipton’s caves, “my TikTok algorithm is screaming for me to go here,” Lily confesses. Here, objects are petrified after passing through the well, coming out the other side transformed into stone. Historically, these have been possessions of locals, but more recently of tourists visiting to take home their own memories. It is claimed that the scientific reasoning behind these objects' brutalist reckoning is a result of the high levels of calcium in the cave's water. But, one can’t help but wonder, as these items become immortalised, and if fables are riddles for us to learn from, that if there are other forces at play. History doesn’t repeat, but often rhymes; Mother Shipton herself, a soothsayer and prophetess.
Crawl Space (2025) reignites Lily’s investigation into the use of wishing wells and their water. Featuring a composition of miniature wells in a caterpillar-like formation, each filled with real well water, as sold to her from “a man on the internet” who only specialised in selling this kind of authentic H2O. Whilst the silver-plated resin sculptures and chains provide a commercially slick smile to the medieval fairytale-like design, the water grounds you back to earth, much like the decay process. As I visited the exhibition halfway through its lifetime, the sculptures had begun to display a slowly creeping rust, hinting at the parallelism of time taking its toll on our own mortal capital.
Beginning to understand Lily Bloom’s work, with all that hides in the dark revealing itself as beautifully frightening, you can’t help but do a Carrie Bradshaw and wonder: how long has society been missing the point? I recently witnessed Arnold Böcklin’s Island of the Dead (1880), on display at The Met. Ironically, the institution was the setting for P.A.I.N’s protest in 2018 led by Nan Goldin: OxyContin bottles were thrown into the Temple of Dendur’s water; part of the Sackler family wing, once investors of the museum, until guilty of creating their own mass Island of Death through their pharmaceutical empire. Staring into the centre of the painting, hypnotised by its stillness, a draped coffin and shrouded figure in the foreground, starkly contrast with the warm light illuminating as though a sun setting onto the scene, out of sight. Rowing towards the dark cove of cypress tree-lined shores, associated through tradition with mourning, it’s hauntingly idyllic. The island is small, with entryways and buildings forged into the mountainsides, perhaps where ghosts sleep. No need for sacrificial weapons to keep you safe, threat is not in attendance. With solitude at the core, Böcklin himself described it as "a dream picture”, surprising then to discover iterations of the painting found their way into the possession of some of the most notorious men in psychological warfare: Hitler, Lenin and Freud.
What would they have thought of the painting if a Rapunzel tower made of wax and blood were in the centre of the island? A piece, no less, called 𝒮𝓉𝒶𝓎 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓂𝑒 (2023). A vessel for your soul, fit for a princess, isolating you within flesh-like walls. If Böcklin were alive to collaborate with Lily, I predict they would create something similar to the feeling of being in a desolate car park in nowhere, middle America, lit by only one street light, highlighting a cloud of bruised sky behind, as though winter nights refused to leave, and the wall we hide behind when we’re scared of the dark never really melted away.
Earlier in the introduction, I compared Lily’s work to performance art. I would argue that the way she demands you to interact with her work and the environments it inhabits is exactly that: a performance. Following the unspoken instructions of her pieces in formation, your body dances in tandem with her eyes captured in three lenticular portraits, following your every move. Greeting you first as you leave the queue, When The Wound Allows (2025). Since learning Lily’s favourite activity is to experience the animatronics at theme parks, a standout being Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights, the parting woods reveal a snowy scene of the artist dressed in a shaggy wolf costume in front of an abandoned cabin. Evoking an all too real fright night perspective, frozen in 3D, “The costume is what someone handmade from years ago, I found it on eBay,” she adds with gratitude, “so it’s been well-loved and has its own story.” Viewing the lenticular portrait up close, you are immersed in the part Lily wants you to play. She reveals to me her character is a visualisation of if she could “speak to her head and heart”. Wouldn’t we all want to take these parts of our own and have a conversation with them, or maybe it’d be clearer which one to follow? Wherever Lily’s decides to go, with her clear, pure intention, I’d entrust to follow.
On the back of discussing her childlike wonder and joy for theme park experiences, we discuss the recent virality of the Hershey Park boys (I won’t include any incriminating quotes from either of us). It seems being scared has never been so sexy, particularly in the reawakening of the mainstream adoption of goth, which feels antithetical, not to mention horror films for TikTok brains. Most recently, Frankenstein, but this also gives a new definition to Gen Z’s fantasy erotica. An article by Vogue claims monsters have never been so hot, as “a physical manifestation of society’s untapped desires.” However, are we being told this is true, as with any trend, without following our head and heart’s intuition after the fleeting passion has died, unable to commit to our desires or ourselves? Historically, society has always had freakish obsessions; more extreme examples are serial killers like Ted Bundy having their own groupie fanbases, which was nodded to in the latest season of Netflix’s You. Unsurprisingly, it was deeply disappointing for avoiding addressing any complex issues. But are creeps just for Christmas?
For Lily Bloom, being scared isn’t just a seasonal attraction. Those of us who are willing to commit to the exploration of our fears and desires earn my immediate respect, which leads to her second lenticular portrait, Barking Of A Quiet Heart (2025). Her costumed character sprawled out of a cupboard, housed inside a liminal studio apartment. Overhead spotlights place her centre stage, yet compositionally revealing the empty room with no audience. Down-trodden and forgotten, unlocking the memory of Woody from Toy Story being left behind, you wonder if this is really the creature that lived under your childhood bed, sparking a newfound empathy.
Lenticular dimensions give the portrait the appearance of apparitions, similar to that which victims of Salem’s infamous witches experienced during the crisis of 1692. Those tortured by their malefic practicioning neighbours, chosen by Satan to carry out his dirty work, often reported seeing apparitions of the guilty, attempting to recruit by getting the innocent to lay their hand on Satan’s book- signing your soul over to him. In 2002, Mary Beth Norton published In The Devil’s Snare, detailing the untold tale of Salem: an exploration of the history of frontier warfare and its impact on the collective mentality of an entire region. Many of the accusations were given by teenage or young girls, with recounts of apparitions given as evidence, often described as having been “tormented”.
Whilst the Salem witchcraft crisis is synonymous with issues of gender and politics, it cannot be ignored that today, the remaining site has become a commodification of death as a spectacle. Evident, as I witnessed in my recent trip in October, in the behaviour of tourists dressed as witches, running around the memorial sites of those who were hanged or pressed to death. Not to mention, the twenty-dollar fee for the gated cemetery, which required booking in advance, and naturally participating in the large queue. Lily’s work presents this discomfort as a distrust in the very system which teaches us to lock away our deepest, darkest fears, for it could never happen to you.
Observing the lenticular portraits as Lily Bloom guided me round, I revealed to her the movements which they require you to perform reminded me of the EMDR process. As her character is positioned amongst three different contexts of found imagery from Flickr (something she regularly explores in her practice, such as her recent publication Terror on Main, 2025), the eye is stimulated to look from left to right, and right to left, in continuous repetitions as you discover more layers to each image: resembling that of the bilateral stimulation whilst recalling traumatic memories under the therapeutic process. As previously mentioned, Lily’s work holds the power to conduct a conversation between your feelings, of your own head and heart. The contents of her images act like unprocessed memories, even if you’re not sure why you remember them, coming face-to-face with the parts of yourself you’re too scared to look at, refraining from admitting they follow us through our day-to-day life. Trauma lives on in the body like a ghost, often taking us by surprise with a jumpscare, haunting us in that moment. If the veil is thin, let Lily Bloom be the one to pierce it.
