Precious’s work is so vast. They have the ability to express themselves through so many different mediums, and I love that their work communicates a level of freedom. At a glance, it can feel like the various mediums are in their own worlds, but I see them as layers that have a throughline. In sections of the film, we literally layered Precious’s work, so you could see how the poetry, the gardens, the drawings, and the stuffed animals all build on one another.

Throughout the process of making this film, the idea of ‘seeds’ emerged as a beautiful motif. Precious talks about their poetry being a seed that then inspires so much of their artwork. They think of themselves as a seed that’s been planted in so many different places, having moved from Nigeria to the UK, and then to the US. They also speak about their grandmother, whom they call a seed saver, taking seeds from one place to the next, so that their family could have a little piece of home wherever they are. I really love the concept of these seeds that we cultivate becoming other things, and it makes an appearance throughout the film.

When I started working on this project, thinking about how it would look and feel, one of the things I was most excited about was trying out a framing that has been living in my head for years, where the participant lies down and looks up, speaking directly to the camera. There are very few situations where that makes sense to do in a documentary, but once I got to know Precious a little bit and knew that the film would build to their installation at the 2026 Whitney Biennial, I decided to have them lying down on a futon surrounded by dozens of stuffed animals that they were working with.

I love that so much because it really captured the implied sweetness and innocence that Precious is communicating about in their work with the stuffed animals, the concept that cuteness can often be accompanied by violence. There is a destructive element to making the stuffed animal works. They are taking apart stuffed animals, putting them back together, and adding taxidermied wings to make something new. In the film, we tried to represent the tension of ripping apart these symbols of comfort, sweetness, and innocence using quick cuts and sound effects of tearing and cutting, then showing the “angels” (as Precious calls them) swaying ever so gently from the ceiling.

I think there’s something so interesting about the juxtaposition between innocence and violence that they’re creating with their work, and I hope the pace and movement of the film invite the audience into Precious’s world and encourage viewers to think about things that represent innocence differently.

– Haimy Assefa
Director, “Precious Okoyomon’s Creative Destruction”