Doesn’t Hold Water

Among the key elements of my work with clay are the exploration of its contemporary significance as a medium of art and the challenge to traditional perceptions of ceramic vessels: What is the relationship between purpose and form? Does a vessel need to contain to fulfill its purpose?

Central themes underlying these questions relate to identity, belonging, and acceptance. What defines a home as home? How do we become part of new environments while remaining connected to past ones? As an expatriate in a foreign country and culture, these questions have profound personal meaning. My journey toward finding security and belonging, both within myself and in my surroundings, finds expression in works that experiment with form and purpose, wholeness and emptiness, inside and outside.

"Doesn't Hold Water" explores these questions through two types of vessels: boats and vases. While vases are designed to hold water, sustaining their contents, boats are meant to keep water out, protecting their cargo. The objects in this series have been perforated, cut, and sewn. Threads and wires penetrate their walls, blurring the boundaries between inside and outside and challenging their traditional purposes of either containing or repelling water.

The boats, as ceramic sculptures symbolizing journey, search, and exploration, mark the beginning of this inquiry. Pierced and covered with metal wires—later replaced by colorful, flexible cotton threads—they embody the tension between fragility and resilience. Gradually, the threads envelop the vessels, striving to fill them and enhance their basic shapes. The pursuit of wholeness in a container that does not contain continues in the form of the vase. These works combine painting and sewing, creating links between the inside and outside and forging new connections in harmony with the object's shape.

Neither full nor empty, the vessels mark a turning point between past and future, embracing the void as a vital element for finding new directions. Hollow yet no longer aiming to contain, they seek completeness beyond their ‘filling,’ transforming absence into possibility and incompleteness into growth.