Beauty and Madness

This work is founded on my late mother’s Buddhist posthumous name, Chiei, written in gold as the base layer.

On top of this golden ground, I have layered the full range of human emotion—joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness—just as it is, without hiding or refining anything.

The golden “Chiei Thousand-Character Text” grew out of my wish to feel my mother closer.

I wrote her name, Chiei, almost every day for a year, and the total number of handwritten characters now exceeds 360,000.

This work is a prayer of gratitude to my mother, my family, and to Mother Earth.

On the unwavering ground of traditional calligraphy – its discipline and rules – I layer not only human joy, but also frustration, bitterness, irritation, and even emotions on the verge of self‑destruction.

The human heart can be both beautiful and mad.

Within that constant trembling, I kept asking myself, “How do I want to live?”

Through this ongoing inner dialogue, I finally arrived at a wish: that every emotion, no matter how dark, might eventually settle into gratitude and hope.

The cracking, decay, and transformation of the red surface are also embraced as part of the work, as a figure of all living things and their inevitable change.

Through this piece, I hope to quietly ask each viewer:

What do you feel, what do you hold dear, and how do you choose to live?