The Way We Escaped From Silence

Product description

The pot is a solid, permanent and eternal vessel to hold the transient motions of hide and seek, capture and escape. It is an open narrative of the female identity waiting to be made from the many options provided by the pot. On the front and back sides, the female identities appear in both forms of solitary and motion. ‘She’ shows herself as both a seated solitary sculpted beast and the empty dress escaping from the frame of the pot. Who is ‘she’, what will ‘her’ be? In this free hand carved stream of consciousness, you are invited to be a part of the decision making.

Qi works primarily with hand-built and thrown high-fire (1220°C) white stoneware with free-hand carved and inlaid original designs. The illustrated works celebrate different carving techniques (Huahua technique in Chinese, or Mishima, and sgraffito) on ceramics and are decorated using decorative slips and underglazes.

Qi’s ceramics search for conversations and mutual encouragement between the object and her carved drawings, which are deeply inspired by Taoism and Phenomenology philosophy. The works are known for their quirky, playful and symbolic narrative representation of the transforming identity, human-nature interactions, feminism, and cultural boundaries.

Rather than following a well-planned blueprint, Qi free-hand carves the organic shapes she builds, allowing the shape of the clay and drawing determine the composition. Like a spreading vine, her expressive pictures find ways to shape the object, forming the outlines and content, vice versa, to capture the flow of consciousness, self-invented visual narratives and personal emotions. Instead of searching for uniformity and certainty, her ceramics call for a curiosity of the unknown, abnormal and asymmetrical.

Qi is also exhibiting several wall works - Ink Drawings and Watercolour / Collage works.