Reflection

My childhood experience of trapping butterflies—trying to preserve their beauty but ultimately harming them—shaped this work. Their deaths left me with deep guilt and forced me to reflect on the relationship between humans and nature. Nature provides us with space, sustenance, and beauty, yet we keep demanding more. Butterflies, for example, hold ecological value, but we also turn them into objects for display. They represent only a small part of our larger appetite for control. For this piece, I built a twisted white-brass cage, welded together to resemble both a physical trap and the “cage” of my own heart. What I trapped wasn’t only the butterfly—it was my own regret. The spider-cotton covering symbolizes the memory that still clings to me. Through this process, I’ve learned to move beyond guilt and toward a deeper understanding: nature can resist, withdraw, or break under pressure, and we must treat it as an equal partner rather than a resource to exploit. Real beauty exists outside the cages we create—in the world and in ourselves.