Since early 2015, taking photographs of and observing the city plus the life forms that inhabit it has become a compulsive habit for Chai Mi. In a self-created database comprising videos and images she has taken at zoos across the world, she seeks out images that make us reflect, adding black bars to cover the animals’ faces in the pictures. In doing so she breaks through the existing order of beholding, and through this anonymizing act she amplifies the alienation in the in any case questionable concept of misusing wild animals as exhibits for our leisure pursuits. Chai Mi has been reading and modifying Aesop’s fables since 2018. In her project A’s Fables she combines these altered texts with her 300 photographs. With this combination, she offers an entirely new way of interpreting her motifs.