Simon Fujiwara Who Can’t Breathe?, 2026

Who Can’t Breathe?, executed in acrylic, charcoal and pastel on canvas, depicts the enchanted rose of Beauty and the Beast. Given a sweating, worried face, the flower raises two green arms against the glass dome that encloses it, as if pressing for air. Its petals fall to the base below. The tale is known from Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve’s 1740 version, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s 1756 retelling, and Disney’s 1991 animated film. In it, the rose measures the Beast’s time. Its petals drop as the years pass, and he must earn love before the last one falls, or remain a beast forever. Here that symbol of decay becomes a body under glass. The dome reads as a stage and a prison. The rose performs its own slow suffocation while falling apart.