In this youth-worshipping, progress-oriented society, death is evaded and hidden.  However, I believe in the importance of accepting death as a part of our life cycle.  My installations, two-dimensional mixed media works, and sculptures, address issues related to cultural perceptions of life and death.  In my work, I employ anatomical references and abstract elements, overlaid rhythmically, to suggest natural cycles.  I use fabric and thin Japanese paper, materials that recall the temporality and fragility of physical bodies.  At the same time, the large scale of my work is intended to envelop the viewer.  The size, the ethereal imagery, and the subtlety of the materials are meant to imply the existence of something beyond the physical body.
   My eight years of experience working as a professional in the medical field in Japan, a Buddhist country, prompted many unanswered questions about the connections within the dualities of birth-death and mind-body.  What does it mean to be alive?  Do one’s beliefs about death change the way one lives?  My work, influenced by Buddhist philosophy, cosmology, and death rituals, as well as my scientific knowledge, is about my search for answers to these questions. 
   As Buddhism explores the unity of opposites, I am interested in combining opposites and exploring the unity of physicality and spirituality as an indispensable aspect for human beings.  Life and death, appearance and disappearance, still and active, are among the dichotomies that inform the work.  I present the structure of the world as a conjoined totality, evoking spiritual quality beyond the materiality.