At the end of 2018, I was diagnosed with leukemia.
After that day, I was forced to repeatedly question my reason for living.
Simply speaking, I just wanted to live, I didn’t want to die.
The will to live was the beginning, and gradually the desire escalated.
The desire to return to the healthy body of the past.
But such desires can never be completely satisfied because there is no such thing as immutability, states will always change, like a wave in the ocean.
Suddenly I found out that there’s no normal such as healthy.
I have to create my own body. I converted my MRI and CT images into video, as a means to express the changes before and after the bone marrow transplant.
The two still images inserted in the middle of the video are microscopic images of chromosome 7 which is the chromosome that causes leukemia, and the normal chromosome created by a donor.
By using different heartbeats at the beginning and end of the video, I expressed the difference between my formerly weakened body and my current body that is trying to recover.
The title "raison d'être" refers to Kierkegaard's existentialism which focused on despair, as well as Sartre's existentialism.
There are two polar opposites for everything, and we are always moving between them, seeking balance.
These poles are not always connected in a straight line.
They overlap, intersect in complex ways, and are closely related to each other.
To express this idea, I created a symbol from my body.
Despair may comes with the realization that this desire cannot be satisfied.
However, if we keep challenging without fear, we will have a bright moment like the blooming of a flower.
I make choices, and don’t look back.
Appreciation of success is not possible without experience with or the possibility of failure.
Just as there is no life if there is no death.
Therefore I seek the meaning of my existence, ‘raison d’etre’.
