Alicja Buławka Fankidejska (Poland)

The Claybodies Cycle continued

Ceramics is my communicator and my point of contact, the nexus of my narrative and relationship with the viewer. This versatile and open-ended medium has a unique capacity to take on and embody new contexts and meanings. Its impressive technological range holds great potential for personal discoveries by an aspiring and inquisitive artistic mind.

Clay is a fascinating, sensitive and sensory material with an organic candour that will reveal the creator’s intention like no other medium can. These inherent material properties offer multi-sensory opportunities for perception and lend themselves to a variety of “form-making” techniques, which then become a perfect launching pad for limitless interpretation. Clay has an irresistible implicit corporality, which is what makes it so engaging. My artist’s touch will build the shapes, then a direct encounter with the viewer will complete the circle of embodied and intuitive involvement in experiencing the ceramic sculpture.

In the subjective geometric and biology-inspired shapes based on the powerful relationship between the softly rounded form and firm precision framing of its surrounding planes, I see the calm, sophisticated composition of the streamlined female body and its metamorphosis. These ways of expressing and interpreting femininity are difficult to represent and contain with a specific shape or entity. One rather talks about an attitude of association and openness to stay in a relationship with the corporality felt, realised and internalised. For that, you have to get “close” and intimate with the sculpture: to touch it, co-sensate it and carefully explore its shapes…

The dynamic firing process in gas kilns, followed by the not-quite-controlled post-firing reduction techniques of raku and its offshoots, throws me out of the seemingly stable realm of creation and lets me move metaphorical shapes into entirely new fields of experimentation, charting new territories of identification and definition.

Exhibition period: 17 May 2024 – 25 August 2024 (Martinsons House, 1 Nikolaja Street, Daugavpils Fortress)