Ashkan Vafai
Poaching for the Pot
My thesis collection is rooted in a sense of vigilance—and a quiet paranoia—along with the heavy, often unspoken duty to protect. Exploring these themes led me into the world of Victorian-era sport hunting, particularly the poachers of the 18th and 19th centuries, who risked their lives hunting on private estates to feed their families.
Poachers in the past hunted while being hunted themselves—a cruel symmetry that mirrors a contradiction of male identity today: protector and predator, visible yet unseen. This tension is inconspicuous and driven by necessity while nonetheless reflecting a strangely aspirational quality.
It is survival as a kind of poetry. It is Poaching for the Pot, my thesis collection.
