I used the literal definition of empathy " take off your own shoes then step into other's shoes"  in my performance. 

During this series, I asked my audiences to take off their shoes and step into the shoes I had created for them. These shoes had been reformed and programmed so that, when two people touched while wearing them, silenced voices and lights came forth. These sounds and sights revealed a hidden truth: that the shoes were once worn by other people, whose suffering had been ignored by others.
One particular pair had belonged to a mother who had lost her son. In 2014, our paths crossed and she told me about the tragic disaster that had claimed her son’s life. After hearing her heartbreaking story, I held her hand and experienced a strong surge of empathy.
This was the moment I wanted to recreate for my audience: the moment of connection with another. I was inspired by the use of bodies as the medium for this communication, and by the idiomatic definition of ‘empathy’:
“to take off your own shoes, and to step into another’s.”

In 2017, I met Eyas Adi - a Syrian refugee - and heard his story. This was during a month-long residency at ZKU in Berlin, where I worked with Adi to produce an interactive installation aiming to tell the heartbreaking tales of refugees.
Taken from the idiomatic definition of ‘empathy’ – “to put yourself in someone else’s shoes” - I decided to use Adi's shoes as the central object of this artwork. Shoes are an important piece of clothing: they have walked every step of our journey with us. So, to justify taking such vital items from my collaborator and modifying them, I first offered to wash Adi's feet.
A film of this process was shown to audiences and directed their attention to the care and humility involved in empathy. The same shoes that were seen in the video were then presented to the audience, who were invited to step into them. When an audience member wore Adi's shoes and held my hand, an electrical circuit would trigger certain sounds and images: Adi's voice, and images of refugees.
Although hushed and unnoticed at first, Adi’s story now broke the silence. It had been cued by a universally warm gesture – holding hands. I was absorbed by the abstract idea that an act of touch can create an “empathy tie,” and in turn, can release stories that have been silenced.

A significant turning point in my work was in 2014, when I crossed paths with a mother who had lost her son in a tragic disaster. After hearing her heartbreaking story, I held her hand and experienced a strong surge of empathy.
After this encounter, I began to use the body as an artistic medium: to explore human communication, between people. Inspired by Martin Buber’s ‘I and Thou’, I leveraged the conductive properties of the human body as the main vehicle for stimuli.
Through this method, the universal gesture of two people holding hands triggered an action or presentation within my work. The fleeting moment where one hand touched another translated into a sensory response, echoing the emotional eruption that happens when we connect with others.
I believe God exists in such moments of strong kinship. The message of Buber’s ‘I and Thou’ played on the idea that “when two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.”
Empathy, connection, and human touch are a major theme in my art practice today. I continue to probe the distinct types of encounters existing among people, between I and thou (you), to discover the melodic rhythm in life - just like the ongoing ebb and flow of a tide.