“Hybrid ceramics – in between Taipei and Bristol”

ABSTRACT

This paper will investigate, as a Taiwanese ceramic artist living away from my homeland, how my ceramic practice attempts to combine Taiwanese social rituals and context with my research through clay to express my cultural identity.
 
I created a series of ceramic works including handmade sculptural porcelain spoons, fingerprints, bananas, and traditional Chinese characters explore the tension of cross-cultural identity, between the East and the West.
 
First, I will explore some of the elements of traditional Taiwanese wedding ceremonies and show how I interpreted these in clay. Some of the elements I used were the chicken, a symbol of the start of the ceremony, and the traditional wooden cake moulds. Since the cake moulds were a similar shape to spoons, I developed this by creating sculptural porcelain spoons which also made reference to Welsh Love spoons and Taiwanese indigenous Amis pottery.
 
Second, I will discuss how I explored my personal identity through my fingerprint wall pieces. I will explain why/how I used my fingerprints as a tool to identify myself as the maker and as a kind of signature. Not only did the use of fingerprints offer an affirmation of my identity, but the repetitive nature of these pieces was a meditative process to comfort my situation of living “in-between.”