ArtPayal UttamOctober 11, 2019Hong Kong

These Artists Use Ceramics to Explore Memory and Meaning

ArtPayal UttamOctober 11, 2019Hong Kong

Ahead of Asia Art Archive’s annual fundraiser auction, we survey the work of three featured ceramic artists who are elevating the traditional craft into the realm of contemporary art

Hong Kong-based ceramic artist Sara Tse has fond memories of watching her mother burn the traditional offerings of joss paper to send to her grandparents in the afterlife. ‘It boggled my mind. Where had those paper object gone? Were they really transformed into ashes, or had they gone to another world?’ Tse recalls. ‘That same curiosity about fire and combustion lead me to experiment with the process of disappearance and rebirth in ceramics.’

Tse began creating deeply personal works that involved dipping found objects such as childhood toys and old journals into porcelain slip before firing them in the kiln. This process allowed her to reconstruct the past in the form of tactile, bone-white sculptures. She describes the disappearance of these objects and the creation of new porcelain replicas as ‘a rebirth like the myth of the phoenix.’

In many senses, the medium of ceramics is being transformed. No longer dismissed as a traditional craft, it’s risen from the ashes as an exciting contemporary art form. Asia Art Archive (AAA), an organisation known for its forward-thinking exhibitions and tenacious support for local artists, is featuring Tse alongside two other leading female ceramic artists in its upcoming fundraising auction. Highlights of the auction include Tse’s Leaves Falling as Songs Coming to My Mind No. 1 — composed of porcelain replicas of bauhinia leaves collected from her former secondary school placed over an abstract image — as well as works by Hong Kong artist Annie Wan Lai Kuen and Beijing-based Yin Xiuzhen.

Like Tse, Yin Xiuzhen incorporates everyday objects into her work, though she takes a different approach. Yin was an oil painting student until she discovered Robert Rauschenberg’s experimental, mixed-media work in a museum. ‘It made a great impact on me and on my understanding of what art can be,’ she says. Turning her back on painting, Yin absorbed herself in installation and became fascinated with ceramics. For one of her most renowned series, Wall Instruments, she embedded worn clothes into cement. She later turned to porcelain, which she used to create Ceremonial Instruments No. 31 (the work included in the AAA auction). ‘We are in contact with ceramics in our daily lives, but because of its commonness we tend to turn a blind eye to it. I want to pull something new out of it and make it different,’ she explains. In stark contrast to traditionally delicate porcelain sculptures, she created a messy monolithic form with fragments of colourful fabric poking out from random punctures. Asked why she inserted second-hand clothing into porcelain, she replies, ‘Because of the intimate nature of clothes, I consider them vehicles for personal experience and individual memories.’ By using such personal objects, her work shines a light on the lives of individuals often overlooked in the process of China’s rapid urbanisation and transformation.

For all her interest in the medium, however, Yin believes her work transcends the label of ‘ceramic art’. Similarly, Annie Wan Lai Kuen is interested in extending the boundaries of the medium. This is perhaps most visible in her conceptual work Every Day a Rainbow, shown at the 11th Gwangju Biennale. Outside the exhibition hall, she displayed in a former shoe repair kiosk vibrant everyday commodities organised according to the colours of the rainbow. Before setting up the display, she used some of the commodity items as moulds to create ceramic replicas with a traditional Korean celadon glaze, which she then placed in different shops. Visitors to her kiosk were given a map to find her ceramic ‘commodities’ in the market. For the AAA auction, Kuen has donated a pair of celadon shoes, replicas of simple rubber shoes found in a stationary shop, from this series. ‘Using ceramics, I blurred the boundaries between the genuine and the counterfeit, the useful and the useless, the cheap and the luxurious,’ Kuen says, adding that this is just one of the ways the medium ‘opens up possibilities and triggers our imaginations.’ Yin and Tse’s works share this same ability to spark new ideas and inspire audiences as they uncover the untapped potential of this fascinating medium.

The artworks in this year’s Asia Art Archive’s fundraising auction are available for online bidding here from October 11th to November 2nd, 2019.

Text / Payal Uttam