Memory Safe

Memory Safe

2022 | Silica compound, non-clay-based ceramic, paper

Egyptian faience is an ancient ceramic ware that was produced in Egypt and the near east around the 4th millennia BC. It was not simply prized for aesthetic values, but also for symbolic and religious reasons. The blue-green colour mimicked turquoise was deemed to have magical properties symbolising life like the original gemstone. The artefacts were also buried with the remain with a belief of rebirth and protection of the journey to next life.

This ancient act of making the intangible evidence of their living and beliefs into a permanent form of ceramics attracted me, in addition to the magical transformation of faience that requires only one firing to glaze in the special colour from matte grey to glossy turquoise.

Although life always comes first, life means much broader in the contemporary world.

What would be a symbolisation of life today? What is a proof of my living as who I have been?

When I thought about forming a symbol of life in faience, I wanted to make a container to store a proof of our existence for the future. To do so, I felt the past would be the most appropriate thing to be. Experience developed us as who we are now, and leads us to the future. Any of our memories are equally precious but none of them is alike.

Simultaneously, although we all have precious memories, many of us are too busy to take time to deliberate about it. I hope this work would be an opportunity for participants to look back their own beautiful past.