Album artwork, single covers, and visual identity for Ancient Bitch — the sophomore record from Norwegian-Zambian artist Shikoswe, follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut Back in the Tall Grass.

The brief began with a small figure she had sketched — a seated form, simple and gestural. The creative direction took that seed and asked: what if this was a real artifact? Something excavated, catalogued, and placed behind museum glass — ancient and futuristic at once, institutional framing applied to a deliberately subversive title.

The result is a photo-real statue with the weight and patina of something genuinely unearthed — sculpted by hand in ZBrush, painted in Substance Painter, lit and rendered in Cinema 4D and Redshift — presented with the dry elegance of a museum placard. Shikoswe later shared that she has aphantasia and couldn't visualize what was being pitched, making her reaction to the first render all the more electric.

Ancient Bitch is part of an ongoing creative collaboration with Shikoswe spanning this album cycle, including two music videos.