‘Tears of Paradise’ also refers to the milky teardrops of poppy flowers that were central to the British Opium Wars in China. The painting is layered with financial newspaper, inkjet printing, sand and paint to form visceral surfaces to encourage a viewer’s perception into a multi-dimensional state of constant flux. Deconstructing the image (map of one belt one road initiative, holy mountain in China, Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, National Endowment of Democracy and Opium Flowers). The woven narratives, mythologies, symbols and stories lead to existential questions about our human condition. The background to the paintings is collaged newspaper, a symbol of everyday human activity and in particular in the world of finance that dominates global economics with its unthinkably complex digital space through which transmissions of trillions of capital determine Utopias and Dystopias. Juxtaposed with the sand it poetically implies an Ozamandian corrosion that all civilisations crumble to sand and from the prism of fictional reality we can imagine what kind of world we want to live in.