SEEDS OF LIFE | Elli Youngeun Lee

“The first time I saw a dead body was in the cadaver lab. Behind fogged glasses, I felt my chest tighten as I faced my willed donor. But soon after, I found myself dissecting layers of skin and rifling through organs with the detachment of studying pages of a textbook. Anatomy lab is a pivotal step in our medical education. In fragmenting the human body as deidentified pieces of knowledge, it guides our hands through the otherwise unseen subjects of disease and reinforces our interconnectedness. In ‘Seeds of Life,’ the flowers honor these physical bodies as vessels of the donors’ time on earth—reminders that, through their gift, our growth and our future patients’ healing take root.”

Elli Youngeun Lee is a painter and third-year medical student at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. She graduated from Brown University with a degree in visual arts in 2022. Lee gleans inspiration from her daily life and on her clinical rotations, hoping to put onto canvas the fleeting but poignant moments of the mundane. Learn more at elli-lee.