Kaitlin O’Connor constructs fictional worlds that look suspiciously familiar, and slightly unstable, just like she is.

Working across illustration and digital collage, she borrows the visual language of consumer culture — branding, packaging, aspirational advertising — to examine status, longing, and the mythology of self-improvement. Her projects unfold as speculative ecosystems where products promise emotional solutions and characters rehearse polished versions of success.

O’Connor doesn’t produce single images so much as build narrative systems. Each body of work behaves like a contained universe: part product launch, part psychological study, part cultural artifact. The surfaces are glossy. The promises are persuasive. Something underneath feels off.

Her practice lives in the tension between satire and sincerity. Humor draws viewers in; discomfort keeps them there. By mimicking the aesthetics of desire, she exposes the quiet absurdity of adulthood — the endless optimization, the curated identities, the fragile belief that one more purchase might complete the self.

Originally from San Francisco and now based in London, O’Connor approaches illustration as a form of world-building rather than image-making. Her work treats fiction as infrastructure — a way to reveal how deeply constructed our “real” lives already are.