Stepmother series uses a method I call “reverse-embedding.” The wooden ruler is chipped back into its mother — but only a stepmother, for its birth mother is no longer retrievable. This series of sculptures began with a performance — an intrusion into a growing tree — and subtly highlights both the exploitation of nature and the frustration of processed resources. In his critique of modern technology, Heidegger uses the term “Bestand” to describe an epistemological stance that regards natural substance as mere functional resource. In particular, Stepmother No.8 employs a tiny fragment of a ruler and a piece of driftwood that, at first glance, seems to conceive the device itself. The contrast in scale reflects my attempt to echo how the measurement system can camouflage itself under the shadow of “the natural.”