To be, or What to be

Discovering our existing through matter and object hood

From Shakespeare’s “to be or not to be” to today, we continue to question life’s meaning. Yet each era of upheaval disrupts inherited beliefs, leaving us unsettled and searching anew. As science deepens our understanding of the material world, spiritual certainty fades. If we shift our focus from transcendence to physical existence, what remains of us?

I explore this question through the body, using the idea of objecthood. In my ceramic works, forms become intermediaries—compressed by multiple spaces or acting as passages between them. These works do not represent the body, but suggest a condition: to exist as an object is to be in relation to surrounding space—to contain, channel, or obstruct it.

In this sense, objecthood is not simply the opposite of subjectivity, but a way to understand human existence as relational, unstable, and continuously shaped by the conditions we inhabit.