Earth holds archeological and physical residue of millions of lives lived before us, yet it is emotionally difficult to imagine our ultimate contact with it when the time comes.
The work presented here was initially conceived during an artist residency in Fuping, China, where I chose to work with clay from Xian region, similar to the one used to make Terra Cotta Warriors.
The contextual value of this material and my perception of Chinese way of life resulted in this body of work. To me, fabricating wonders out of tiny multiples is “China”; Silks, Imperial Robes, Terracotta Warriors, Beijing city itself, Ai Wei Wei’s sunflowers or Nike,so I press-molded thousands of tiny stoneware discs of different profiles and strung them in different sequences to create single-string necklaces. The idea was to create a fine neck string that vibrated a bit with body movement.
Using local clay is really important for me in any new place, for I see earth/clay as a time machine of TGV quality. It takes you back in time and contextualizes your existence as mere one out of million similar beings (real De ja vu?).
Holding a clay object in your hand guarantees a physical contact with multitude of minerals and metals, which have lived inside millions of biological and botanical life forms (that fed on each other ),absorbed their dead bodies and created new lives again.
Clay of warm color is the only material that carries traces and histories from distance past. If particles could somehow communicate, I think every gram of clay could be an epic starting right from the big bang!
The final objects were designs for limited mass production.
EARTH,BODY AND CYCLE was first presented as an end-of-residency solo in the Scandinavian Museum at FULE Ceramics Arts Museums, Fuping. A month later this show travelled to Zahoor Ul Akhlaq Gallery at National College of Arts,Lahore,Pakistan.
