Violence is not always loud. It does not always bruise or break skin. Some of the most enduring forms arrive through language, quiet, ordinary phrases that correct, shame, or override a person’s inner knowing.

Wash your eyes out is not an act in itself. It is a metaphor that instructs someone to distrust what they see, to question their own perception, and to submit their inner world to external authority. Nothing is struck, yet something vital is displaced.

This kind of violence is difficult to name because it hides inside normality. It wears the language of discipline, guidance, or care. It asks for compliance while presenting itself as reason. And because it leaves no visible mark, it is often dismissed, even by the person who carries it.

Over time, this silencing becomes internalised, repeating itself long after the original words have disappeared.

Oh Lily holds this moment of interruption. Not as an accusation, and not as a story of damage, but as a record of what happens when language crosses an invisible threshold, when words stop communicating and begin to colonise.

This is the kind of violence that robs without announcing itself. It does not destroy outright; it disorients. And in doing so, it quietly shapes who we believe ourselves to be.

This work sits within a wider body of art exploring similar themes.