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Janek Simon is an artist fascinated by travel, as well as by the figure of the traveller through history, the stories and accounts they created, and the cultural influence of the ‘images’ they generated over time. He often himself incorporates travel, the experience of other cultures and the industry of ‘ethnic’ objects made especially for tourism, as inspiration and working methodology of his practice. The series of sculptures Man with the Head of Dog 1-5 portray dog-headed people inspired by the descriptions and illustrations in the travelogue of merchant and traveller Marco Polo from the medieval era. These cynocephali – as dog-headed beings from different mythologies across time and culture are referred to – were, according to Polo, mythical beings inhabiting a country he claimed existed in the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. Made via 3D-printing, the figurines take on a distinct synthetic quality, placing them technologically in the present moment. With their colours providing a psychedelic quality, the dog-headed people remind us of how we have related to otherness through exoticism and the construction of myths.