When I was in high school, I lost over 20 kilograms in just over a month. I was later diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, which requires insulin injections to regulate blood sugar levels. For people like me, we face two major dangers: one is complications caused by high blood sugar, and the other is the sudden shock or even fatal threat caused by hypoglycemia. I have to maintain a delicate balance among eating, injecting insulin, and physical activity to keep my blood sugar stable. There’s no room for error. These constant fluctuations and setbacks eventually transformed into some of my early artworks, such as A Tightrope Walking and Confusing Times as a Youth, which were expressions of my internal emotions and distress.
In 1994, while studying in graduate school in the United States, I had an epiphany from a ballpoint pen my brother gave me. As the ink was about to run dry, I found myself questioning: “If a pen can represent a person’s life, then what kind of life have I been repeating through the long cycle of birth and death?” That’s when I tried to lay out all the lines a pen could draw onto a single flat surface. A pen could be a metaphor for a single lifetime (a life), or a single self (the ‘I’). The trace of the pen represents the actions of a lifetime, while the worn-down, used-up pencil symbolizes the fate of the physical body.
In the act of “pen walking” (drawing), its meaning naturally transforms depending on the medium and context. Sometimes it symbolizes reincarnation and pilgrimage, as in the Pen Walking Series - Pilgrimage to Mount Kailash; sometimes it questions knowledge and power, as in the Scribbling Textbook series; other times, it becomes a form of spiritual practice and contemplation, as in Ten Practices and Vows and Six-Syllable Mantra. Therefore, the act of “pen walking” as a creative gesture has no absolute permanence or truth.
It was during this period in graduate school that I began studying critical theory and Buddhism. However, Western art history, aesthetics, and critical theory couldn’t comprehensively answer my life and artistic inquiries. Instead, it was through Daoist thought and then Buddhist philosophy that I was able to fully digest, integrate, and resolve my questions, and gradually put them into practice. I transformed daily Buddhist practices into artworks. These creations became my artistic reflections on the existence of life and its suffering—seeking only to practice liberation through art as a spiritual path.
This philosophy is embodied in my performance piece Pencil Walker, which I performed over a span of twenty years. In each of the sixty performances, each lasting over two hours, I sharpened pencils, chanted sutras, and walked back and forth in front of a wall, drawing countless lines with pencils. If one pencil symbolizes a lifetime, then the wall represents the accumulated karma of many lives. Each line marks a trace of my existence and reincarnation.
Over the years, I’ve had to constantly test my blood, record results, and inject insulin. For me, measurement is a necessary means of survival; recording is a way to examine and assess my state of being. Before I studied art, these acts of measurement served purely practical purposes—they were passive, forced, and unavoidable. But through conceptual art, I discovered that these actions could be transformed. Measurement became awareness, recording became reflection, and repetition was elevated into ritual. This transformation allowed me to reclaim agency and construct meaning in the face of absurd reality.
In my work, measurement has become an act of resistance. I use the body as a tool and medium—a site both subjected to discipline and full of defiance. Through absurd, non-standard, and irrational acts of measurement, I challenge the authority of systems such as medicine, art, and society, questioning the boundary between objectivity and subjectivity. I measure cities, institutions, my own body, and interpersonal relationships—breaking the rules to reveal the fragility and constructed nature of control.
Just like in the film The Sacrifice, which deeply influenced me, where the protagonist tells his young son, “If you do the same thing at the same time every day, like a ritual, the world will begin to change.” My body is not as strong as others. I can only work through persistence, accumulation, and perseverance. As long as I establish the “right” rules in life and practice them faithfully, allowing “art” and “life” to nourish each other, then as long as I’m alive, I am creating.
Art is not an outcome—it is a way of living. It is repentance, resistance, and spiritual practice. It is my way of coexisting with illness, with systems, and with doubt. It is also the source of strength that keeps me moving forward.