AfterThoughts
The project expresses the values we overlook in our busy lives through painting, sound, technology and performance, based on philosophical thought.
Meeting friends who live in different countries, with different lifestyles and aims, she has come to feel that something is missing. Most of us seem to live without the space to reflect on what we truly value or who we want to be. Life keeps pulling us away from such essential questions. ‘AfterThoughts’ brings these missing pieces forward, the ones we lose when we are overwhelmed by busyness, hectic schedules and competitive interactions. She hopes this project offers a pause, a moment to sit with what we truly value.
‘AfterThoughts’ in this project can have several meanings. It can be a thought that settles into a new shape as your perspective changes over time. It can be the thought that comes directly after a certain concept or conversation. Or it can be your state or way of being after you have gone through many different ways of thinking. All these meanings are at the core of the project. This project is also about the people you talk with along the way, those who change how you see things, give you time to refine your thoughts, and help you become more of the person you want to be. Her art wants to speak to anyone who needs the beauty of walking a path that is slow-paced yet inwardly challenging, calm yet firm, valuable yet demanding patience.
‘After Liberty’ is the first chapter she is opening with, and further chapters will follow from her reading of Boethius, Marcus Aurelius and Zhuangzi.
Last December, she read John Stuart Mill’s 『On Liberty』, and the vague questions in her head grew sharper. Although it was published back in 1859, much of what he wrote about individuality, freedom, the need for diverse environments, individual development and the dangers of the tyranny of the majority set off a quiet storm inside her. These ideas might seem obvious today, but his words felt like a fist knocking on the doors of the society she grew up in, the environment that shaped her and the mindset she had always held.


Left
The tyranny of prevailing opinion holds back the growth of individuality.
70 x 50 cm · Oil & oil stick on canvas · 2026
Right
"So monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty;
there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify."
70 x 50 cm · Oil & oil stick, acrylic on canvas · 2026
The emotional impact of these passages led her to abstract visualisation combined with music composition and other media. Each painting in the ‘After Liberty’ series is based on specific passages from 『On Liberty』, and takes its title from Mill’s own words or messages in that passage. She paints the emotional response each passage provoked in her. The passage is shown alongside the painting it inspired, so viewers can see where each work comes from and carry on their own reflections from the ideas.
With 『On Liberty』, art and philosophy met for the first time in her work. Examining these philosophical messages and discussing them with others is no longer just about finding inspiration or material for her art, but is becoming an essential foundation of her life.


Left
"Public opinion means, at the best, some people's opinion of what is good or bad for other people."
70 x 50 cm · Oil, oil stick & acrylic on canvas · 2026
Right
"If it were only that people have diversities of taste,
that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all after one model."
70 x 60 cm · Oil stick & acrylic on canvas · 2026


Left
Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model,
but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides.
60 x 70 cm · Oil, oil stick & acrylic on canvas · 2026
Right
A person's judgment deserves confidence only when it stays open to criticism and every variety of opinion.
70 x 100 cm · Oil & acrylic on canvas · 2026
Each sketch is inspired by the passage from the book 『On Liberty』(1859) by John Stuart Mill.

"Where, not the person’s own character, but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress."

"Not only in what concerns others, but in what concerns only themselves, the individual, or the family, do not ask themselves — what do I prefer? or, what would suit my character and disposition? or What would allow the best and highest in me to have fair play, and enable it to grow and thrive? They ask themselves, what is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances? (...)"

"Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the better from the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and avoid the latter. (...) But neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it. (...)"

"He is capable of rectifying his mistakes, by discussion and experience. Not by experience alone. There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument; but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it. (...)"









