cups as a space of extended intimacy
This research project explores intimacy, tenderness, memory and domestic space. Intimacy that unfolded during queer sexual encounters has been reframed through the lenses of desire, gifting and reciprocity. As time (e)lapses, the heat of intimacy mellows to embers of tenderness, and the urge to capture or preserve the event arises. To keep these eclectic encounters from fading, I turn to my practice of hand-thrown ceramics to preserve them in tactile form.
I queried how a ceramic practice could record memories of intimacy, tenderness and desire in clay. Could a ceramic object become a material record of intimate events? The cup humbly emerged as a binding force between tender methods and tending to the chosen material: clay. A series of hand-thrown cups representing these intimate encounters through form, glaze, surface and shape were crafted to answer this question. The cup, positioned in the domestic interior, can travel with its user—as memories do—and continues to sweetly caress the lip and warm the hand that tenderly holds it.
