Lilly Rianne Stienstra

Design - Illustration & Animation Design

My project “The Longest Route Home” is about the fear of not making it home safely as a woman. It grew out of my own experiences and conversations with women around me. What stands out to me is how normal certain behaviors have become. Taking a longer route, staying alert, constantly assessing situations. Not as a reaction to a single event, but as something that is always there, something you are always aware of.

As a young woman, that feels suffocating. The idea that I constantly have to think about what could happen, and that this has become so normal that it is barely questioned. It affects how I read situations, where I choose to go, and how much space I allow myself to take. Something that seems so small actually has a much bigger impact than you might think.

In my work, I try to hold onto that feeling and make it visible. I create dark and suffocating images in which this constant tension is present. Nothing specific is happening, but something is there. A sense of threat that does not disappear, even when nothing is actually going on. Alongside this, I create images that focus on the inner thoughts of the woman, on the scenarios that play out in her mind. How we are taught to imagine the worst, to always think ahead to what could go wrong. How the feeling of being unsafe never fully goes away.

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