"The Anxiety of a Fish"

“The Anxiety of a Fish” began as an exploration of death as an experience, and the idea that universally and instinctively, a violent death is a living thing’s deepest fear. They (and we) will do anything to avoid it. I used fish to represent this concept because I can’t think of any other animal closer to death than them - anxious about any movement, watching for shadows in the open ocean, and constantly paranoid of betrayal from their own species. They’re on our plates, washed up on shore, and in our pop-culture references (“it’s okay to eat fish, because they don’t have any feelings”). They’re given little to no sympathy, and no ceremony apart from being flushed down the toilet… or painted as a metaphor for death. This one is to all my fish out there, I see u