2025
Linoleum cut on recycled stoneware glazed with ashes from graveyard flowers, glass from funeral candles and aluminium from tea lights mounted on cedar wood soaked with essential oils (vetiver and cedar)
43 x 56 x 3 cm
A ceramic relief of a priest in mourning collecting his tears in a tear jar, made by pressing linoleum cuts into freshly recycled clay. Crushed into pieces and reassembled as a mosaic.Inspired by a fresco at the Kykkos Monastery in Cyprus, referencing the myth of the tear bottle. Ritual objects without evidential proof of use, but through their repeatedness as motif in art history, now in either way carrying ritual use and testimony of human need to hold onto the ephemerality of life, where everything is always in transition of becoming something else.
Various materials from a local cemetery’s compost pile were crushed and made into a glaze - ashes from graveyard flowers and stretcher bouquets, glass from funeral candles, potsherds from flowerpots, rust and aluminium from tealights. Materials that carry the ritual weight of loss, sorrow and but also life goes on. Giving it a shiny yet corrosive surface of over-saturated, yet indecipherably matter.
Mounted on cedar wood scented with essential oils (vetiver and cedar) that give the work a dense aromatic presence in the room. Herbs that used in ritual practices helps soothe overwhelm, promote inner balance, and enhance mental clarity by grounding the mind and foster calm resilience.