School of Fine Art Sculpture & Environmental Art
Mahlon Sugawara

My practice explores cultural hybridity through object-making, using speculative fiction to examine how symbols transform across different contexts. Working with figurative wood and stone carvings, drawings, and jewellery, I create objects that exist between traditions, constantly evolving.
Fabulation fills the gaps between inherited narratives, reimagining folklore with chimerical figures and shifting landscapes. These invented stories become a way to process identity as something fluid, where meaning isn’t fixed but constantly reinterpreted. The chimaera is reimagined as something adaptive rather than monstrous, reflecting the way cultural heritage is reshaped through time and distance.
Craft is central to this process. By carving, drawing, and assembling, I engage with family histories while allowing space for new interpretations. The objects I make function like fragments of unwritten myths, holding both personal and collective resonance. Folklore, in its simplest form, helps us navigate change, through my work, I extend that function, using speculative storytelling to explore identity as an ongoing act of reinvention.

