Lilith WuLilith Wu
IllustrationBooks/ComicsMotionAbout
“Between her fingers there was a birth defect, a thin webbing […] This was the reason she wore gloves in public, though her abnormality rarely hindered her in practical matters. Still, she despised herself because of this single flaw.” —The Museum of Extraordinary Things
"The one time she’d attempted to rid herself of the webbing with a sharp knife used for coring apples, beads of blood began to fall onto her lap after she nicked the first bit of skin. Each drop was so brightly crimson, she had startled and quickly dropped the knife." —The Museum of Extraordinary Things“I felt comfortable in this element, a sort of girlfish, and soon I didn’t feel the cold as others did, becoming more and more accustomed to temperatures that would chill others to the bone.” —The Museum of Extraordinary Things“My favorites were the tigers, so fierce their green eyes sparked with an inner light, and, of course, the horses with their manes flying out behind them, so real I imagined that if I were ever allowed onto one, I might ride away and never return.” —The Museum of Extraordinary Things“For the past few nights she’d experienced a recurring dream in which she remained underwater for so long she grew gills and fins. It was a painful, bloody process. In every dream, when she attempted to climb from the river to its banks, she found she could not walk across the grass but instead slipped back into the watery depths, gasping for breath, confused as to what sort of creature she had come to be.” —The Museum of Extraordinary Things“It was three in the morning, and there was a sudden shooting blaze above Dreamland [… It] was no longer an entertainment, and Brooklyn was no longer Kings County, but a wild country where the beasts ran down Surf Avenue.” —The Museum of Extraordinary Things
2021 - 2022

Collected Memories

Acrylic, acrylic gouache, colored pencil

A series of images loosely inspired by The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman. The protagonist has a form of congenital syndactyly—webbing between her fingers—and must come to terms with what part this plays in her identity as she grows up, making some startling discoveries about her origins along the way.

This series was on display in the School of Visual Arts Gramercy Gallery in February - March 2022.