Details
Ceramic
H. 14 x w. 15.5 x d. 5 cm
Photo credit: Kes Efstathious
About the Artist
‘My practice follows my obsession with materials such as clay and obsidian, and ideas and experiences around language, identity and archaeology. As a transnational artist, the ability to move from one language and culture to another is crucial and illuminates the centrality of change within the human experience. In my own life, I have been fascinated by the physical transformations occurring as I adopted English as my primary language for daily use. My curiosity has led me to explore this phenomenon through material. For example, glaze is a surface material, it speaks a very specific language as the skin of the object. When it is made to be the structure which holds everything together, the artifact itself, we discover a material with a new sentience and a new physicality. Glaze is now a verb and no longer a descriptor.’
‘This way of working represents a great risk and many failures. But it also represents space. Space for opportunity, for observation and for discovery. My objects are the witnesses and bearers of the time, process and labor that went into bringing them to life. There is a chaos, an unpredictability contained within the sharp edges of the carved glaze, like the ruins of a city, the remnants of a civilization. These artifacts consume me and contain me, mirroring Borges’ words “El tiempo es la sustancia de que estoy hecho. El tiempo es un río que me arrebata, pero yo soy el río; es un tigre que me destroza, pero yo soy el tigre.” This process embraces time as a continuous circle. Time as a substance that both nurtures us and consumes us.’
Renata Cassiano Alvarez is a Mexican-Italian artist born in Mexico City. She works predominantly in the medium of clay, searching to develop an intimate collaborative relationship with material and material language. Influenced by archeology and history, she is interested in the power of objects with a sense of permanence and timelessness and language as transformation. Her work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in public and private collections. She works between her studio in Veracruz, Mexico and Springdale, Arkansas in the USA.