uncontainable, unattainable

Ceramic installation, 2025

Developed during an artist residency at the Vermont Studio Centre, uncontainable, unattainable explores how drawing might inhabit functional ceramic forms as a means of articulating what is elusive, fragmentary, and difficult to contain. Working with vessels as sites of containment, I became interested in how objects attempt to preserve not only material histories, but also the knowledge, memories, desires, and cultural inheritances that continually exceed them. A vessel promises preservation, while drawing surfaces experiences, thoughts, and relationships that can never be fully contained.

Drawing upon the visual languages of amphorae, reserve motifs, heraldry, portraiture, commemorative objects, and ancient ceramics, the series considers provenance as something more than ownership or origin. Instead, the vessels become repositories of transmission: objects that reveal how knowledge, symbols, and identities are carried, repaired, transformed, and reinterpreted across generations. Images of my own body appear alongside idealized male figures and historical portraiture, introducing desire as another form of inheritance. Here, longing exceeds the body just as memory exceeds the vessel, negotiating the distance between self-image, aspiration, and culturally inherited ideals of masculinity. The body becomes another vessel within the work, one that attempts to contain identity and desire, yet remains equally incapable of fully holding either.