Memorial to the children of gaza (in development)
This is a participatory, community-made ceramic installation work.
Various clay types. Variable dimensions. Individual piece average: 10 x 3 x 3cm. Jan 2024 - open-ended.
Over the past 12 years, my practice has been focussed on ceramic installations that utilise handmade multiples; often translating violent, incomprehensible and intangible statistics into tactile objects. 7 of those years were spent in formal study, funnelling toward research in genocide studies, philosophy, and a doctoral project examining the role, relevance and responsibility of contemporary art in the face of atrocities. A pillar of that research, as it is for me moving forward, is engaging with meditative modes of long-term and large-scale making, processing the things that I can’t stop thinking about through the labor of art practice itself.
The history and poetics that are inherent to clay is why it remains my primary working material. It has been fundamental to human survival, is completelly ubiquitous to daily life, but has also been utilised for millennia to honour, memorialise and remember both people and place. As raw clay, it is infinitely malleable and receptive to fine gestures. Once heated to the right temperature it becomes ceramic, likeable to stone; a permanent record of maker, material and meaning. The ability for ceramic material to last thousands of years bares a responsibility to its use, but also positions it in powerful ways to reference events that we should never forget.
^Ceramic memorial pieces in progress.
Memorial to the Children of Gaza will comprise a currently indefinite amount of handmade ceramic pieces: one for each child that has been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. The number of pieces being made follows the non-controversial annd underestimated statistics of Al Jazeera’s Israel-Gaza war live data tracker. As of April 3, 2024, at least 13,000 children have been killed with more than 8000 missing.
The form of each piece references a small body wrapped in a white shroud: a devastating and terribly familiar visual symbol of the genocide currently being perpetrated on the Palestinian people.
The artwork, which is currently in progress, invites anyone to create one or more pieces. This enables a great diversity of people to contribute to a large-scale artwork crediting each participant as a ‘maker’. The process of making pieces is an exercise of slow and considered, yet active solidarity. Beyond being sculpted out of raw clay, each piece will then be coated by hand in a white clay slip, carefully dried and fired in a kiln: a process that transforms malleable clay to a state of ceramic permanence.
In Gaza right now, as it is with prior events of war and genocide; the devastation and human cost is abstracted and reduced to mere numbers. This artwork is a small step beyond those numbers, giving them a permanent, physical, handmade presence: a gentle invitation to contemplate the Palestinian names, stories and family lines these pieces reference, and how they allude to a much larger crime against humanity. This work does not and cannot encompass the scale of loss. It isolates a single underestimated statistic of Gazan children who have been killed since October 7; not accounting for the killing of innocent men and women; the tens of thousands that are missing or buried under rubble; the tens of thousands that are permanently maimed, suffering surgeries and amputations without anesthetic as well as the psychological trauma that will pass through countless generations. The work also doesn’t account for the inevitable escalation of death due to Israel’s weaponisation of displacement, famine, disease, and the withholding/destruction of essential humanitarian aid.
This artwork is in its early stages, hence this brief statement and developmental images. The memorial is growing through the participation of people such as yourself; guiding the final artwork, more detailed writing and its eventual exhibition through raw process and avenues for conversation and feedback.
Currently, I am facilitating and funding this work independently.
^Initial concept/installation renders: 10,000 pieces (subject to change).
For guidance on making a piece for the memorial, each making station/session will have a small group of finished, presented pieces to share their form. This link takes you to a page that includes an optional demonstration video showing how they are made, followed by three brief questions for anyone who has made one or more pieces. Anyone who makes one of more pieces will be permanently credited as a ‘maker’ for this artwork.
Making steps:
Take a ball of clay from the bucket/container.
Please fold the plastic back over the clay balls so they don’t dry out.
Roll your clay ball on the bench to create a cylinder shape.
Sculpt the piece from that cylinder.
Take your time and sculpt the clay gently.
*Be careful of applying too much downward pressure on the clay, as it may stick to the surface of the bench. Keep moving it around as you sculpt*.