When we speak of “disease”, are we referring to an objectively existing set of symptoms, or to something that comes into being only after it has been named and constructed?

Recently, the exhibition “When Does Life Become a Disease”, curated by Huang Yiwen from Grade 11 Class 5, was presented on campus. Integrating biological science, medical discourse, and artistic expression, the exhibition employs interactive installations and textual artworks to guide viewers into a philosophically reflective space centered on the concept of “disease.”   

The first interactive installation, “If a Condition Is Never Named, Does It Still Require a Cure?”, invites viewers to select and combine elements such as “fatigue,” “inflammation,” and “anxiety” to construct a bodily state. Participants then assign a name to this state and determine whether it requires medical intervention. In this process, the viewer becomes both a patient being diagnosed and a doctor diagnosing others. The installation provides no fixed standard; instead, it reconstructs the real-world trajectory through which disease is formed—from observable biological phenomena, to the intervention of language and naming, and ultimately to the establishment of medical frameworks. It suggests that disease is not inherent existed, but rather being constructed by human-beings, through acts of naming, classification, and judgment.   

The second installation, “When Does Life Become a Disease”, further interrogates the threshold at which life is categorized as pathological. Through the capture, arrangement, and reinterpretation of Western blot imagery, the curator raises a fundamental question: at what moment does life cross the boundary and become defined as disease? In the absence of human intervention, would such definitions exist at all, or are they solely products of human cognition? Drawing on laboratory visuals, medical definitions, and data logic, the installation reveals the fluid and ambiguous boundaries between health and disease, as well as between biological signals and visual arts. As the exhibition suggests, cellular states and protein expressions do not inherently carry meanings such as “abnormal” or “dysfunctional”; these labels mainly emerge from human assumptions about what constitutes the “normal.” Only when a value is marked as deviation, or a feature is named as a symptom, does a bodily state acquire the status of “disease.”  

In addition, poems, such as “Band” and “Naming”, are suspended within the space, offering viewers a transition from rational analysis to emotional experience. Beyond the language of science, these poetic works capture forms of experience that resist precise definition, adding further emotional and existential depth to the concept of disease.

Rather than offering definitive answers, the exhibition poses a more fundamental inquiry: when humans draw boundaries in the name of science and intervene in life in the name of treatment, are we uncovering an objective reality, or are we continually shaping our understanding of what counts as “normal”?