From Technology to Sculpture: The Story Behind Oldbies

For much of my professional life, I've worked at the intersection of technology and social change.

I co-founded Akvo, helping organisations use open-source technology and data to improve development projects across Africa and Asia. Later, I worked with Fairfood, focusing on transparency in global food supply chains. Today, I direct HackYourFuture, a nonprofit helping refugees build careers in technology.

Throughout these experiences, one thing became increasingly clear to me: data can help us understand the world, but stories help us connect with it.

Finding Another Way to Tell Stories

In 2018, I founded Oldbies, a personal artistic project combining original narratives with sculpture

My characters often begin as stories. I explore their personalities, their worlds and the questions they represent before developing their physical forms.

Digital sculpting helps me experiment with shape and proportion, but the most important transformation happens when the work becomes physical.

I work with clay, epoxy, bronze and mixed media, developing surfaces and details by hand. The process is slow, sometimes unpredictable, and very different from my professional work.

That's part of what draws me to it.

Stories in Bronze

Two narrative worlds have become central to Oldbies.

Eclipsed Eternity explores creation, decay, responsibility and the passage of time.

Echoes in the Dark follows four characters through a world without sunlight, exploring memory, struggle and sacrifice.

Both stories also exist as audio narratives. They offer another way to experience the worlds behind the sculptures, although each physical artwork is intended to stand independently.

A Different Kind of Impact

My work in technology has always been concerned with creating positive change.

Sculpture approaches that ambition from another direction.

A small bronze figure cannot solve a social problem. But perhaps it can make someone pause, remember something or see the world differently.

I like the idea that art doesn't always need to make a loud statement.

Sometimes, it only needs to whisper.