So. Bora Aksu. Ghosts. Obviously. Not long ago, he was wandering the halls of the George & Dragon—this old 18th-century coaching inn in Buckinghamshire—and honestly, I can picture it so clearly it kind of rattles me. Dim corridors. Creaky floors. That feeling where the air feels… watched. He was looking for his next muse and—oh boy—he found her. A barmaid named Sukie. Two hundred years ago. Beautiful. Desired. And doomed (because of course).

Bora Aksu’s East London studio is lined with cracked china dolls. Their faces are chipped, their bodies fractured—each one carrying a quiet kind of tragedy. “I collect them wherever I go,” he says, surveying the room like a curator of forgotten souls. “But only the broken ones. The ones that have been rejected. I save them, and I mend them.”