ARTISTE

Christine LOUVIAUX

Western culture has dualised and hierarchised the concepts of 'culture' and 'nature' and built a society based on exploitation. This system has now reached its peak. Collapse and self-destruction range from burn-out to climate change. Transcending this dualism is therefore a vital epistemological leap.

Sculpture as a process of co-creation… between earth-fire-air-vegetation-human.

The project I’m presenting at Wabi Sabi is a humble attempt to explore this transcendence by practising ceramics in the most ecological way possible.

Unmodelled clay in all its forms is combined with geometric shapes, structured edges, polished and sculpted as human psychic and social constructions.

Sculpture emerges from a mass of earth (kurinuki). I invite it to give itself. And the piece is constructed by following the paths of formation and deformation as events occur. It’s more a question of meeting than of mastering the material.

Then comes the test of fire. She magnifies everything in a wild firing with charcoal, sometimes with wood. The ash from trees and plants deposits slag and becomes enamel. The oxidation-reduction of oxygen fixes the tongues of fire and smoke to the earth, which becomes sandstone.