Artist YazXL and her Ibiza cabinet of curiosities

'I have a very curious mindset, and I’m drawn to things that might repel other people. But even I have my limits – I’m not just here for the gore.' Yaz Exall, better known as YazXL, was raised in farmland in East Sussex, where a lifelong fascination with the natural world began. ‘I saw more sheep than people,’ she laughs. ‘I became very absorbed in the inner workings of the animal kingdom and I’m far more at home with creatures than with humans’. Exall’s creature fascination is what has propelled her into the dizzy heights of the creative scene just a few short years since graduating Central Saint Martin’s. Her work spans fashion, special FX prosthetics and sculpture, exploring explores themes around the cycle of life and death, as well as the narrative between the artificial and organic.

'An innate ‘morbid curiosity’ (her own words) means Exall's work blurs the boundaries of art and fashion, subverting the idea of nature as a benevolent force. ‘I’m really attracted to the idea of nature gone wrong,’ she muses. ‘Like when a lamb is born with five legs - I find that astonishingly beautiful.’ Baby animals feature heavily in her work – a hyperreal new-born Capricorn goat created for the cover of FKA Twigs’ album (still damp with amniotic fluid) went viral online, causing one fan to call her out for ‘killing animals for art’ (she absolutely doesn’t – creatures are either entirely prosthetic or are already dead, in which case she employs the services of the late designer Alexander McQueen’s trusted taxidermist.) At The Standard Ibiza, Exall’s interactive fantasy world includes oversized seahorses created from stillborn foals and a scorpion-like tail chair that encases the sitter. ‘I want to honour the grotesque, the obscure, the supernatural. Yet I do it through a lens of childlike wonder. Yes, there’s a technical sophistication to my work but there’s also an element of naivety that comes from a very innocent sense of amazement at the planet and its otherworldly creatures.’