Transience
bone ash, digital printing on paper, plaster, fabric; 12 x 16 x 3.5 feet; 2010

This installation, which mimics a Japanese ritual, implies “linkages” of individual human beings from past to future, of layers of human histories, of endings and new beginnings, and of humans and nature. In the installation, twisted paper is sewed into bedsheets that are laid over the landscape of human remains. These twisted papers contain multitudes of names collected from phone books. I use fabric and thin Japanese paper--materials that recall the temporality and fragility of physical bodies. For this work, I chose white bedsheets, which remind me of hospital beds, as the place human life starts and ends.

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Circulations
digital printing on paper, plaster, fabric, bone ash; each sculpture approx. 18 x 12 x 15 inches; 2010

This installation is a collection of sculptures, "Season 1 - 7." Like "Transience" above, it implies "linkages," as well as the cycles of nature and of human beings. Each sculpture consists of shapes of vertebrae and the pelvis. It is covered with white fabric, and twisted phone book pages go in and out though the fabric.

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Journey
mixed media on Japanese paper and cheese cloth, styrene form, paper mache, bone ash, porcelain; 12 x 16 x 16 feet as a whole installtion; 2007

The idea of this installation is taken form an Asian funeral ritual. The white powder on the floor is bone ash, each pile of which has an axis bone sitting on it. The axis is the second cervical vertebra. It, along with the atlas (the first cervical vertebra), creates a pivot type of joint which allows the head to turn. In Japan, the axis is called “nodobotoke,” which means “the Buddha in the throat,” because the shape of it looks like the seated Buddha. It is, therefore, treated with greater respect when the dead are cremated. After cremation, family members pick up the remains using chopsticks.The axis is picked up last by the person closest to the dead one. It is then laid in a special place separately from the rest of the ashes.

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One or Millions?
mixed media on fabric, plasrer; 12 x 16 x 16 feet as a whole installation; 2006

This installation is made from a long fabric on which a continuous chain of vertebrae is drawn. The fabric connects shapes of human bodies that are molded from my own body.

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Evolutionary Momentum
mixed media on Japanese paper, bone ash; 105 x 320 x 12 inches; 2007

The white piles are bone ash connected with arches of vertebrae drawn on thin Japanese paper. The pieces of thin paper are hung from the top so that they move with air currents.

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