Da-Sein

Abstract

DA-SEIN, my MFA Thesis Project, explores the vessel as a conceptual container, which helps ideas of the self or lived experience become tangible. At the center of the project is my 'lived experience' as a woman, a single mother, a human being, as connected to phenomenology and feminist research inquiries. The terms ‘lived experience’ and ‘container’ are foundationally drawn from Ursula Le Guin’s essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.” My MFA project includes four distinct works, which are exhibited in conversation with each other. The metaphoric and metamorphic cocoon-like structures in the piece Hüllen [hulls] are the focal point of the exhibition. They not only intend to hold the protective spaces of the transformative possibilities of female lives, such as past events or future dreams, but also ambiguously, they intend to represent roles and responsibilities of holding space. Holding space is a synonym for caring. The sculptural vessels honor the invisible acts of caring, which sometimes compete with transformational potentials and fleeting time. This story of existence is supported by these additional works: ad infinitum; the presence of essence—inversion of space; and [stela]. My key methods include modes of abstraction, materiality, material beauty, blurring boundaries between the man-made and the nature-made, sloppy craft, as well as the use of the kiln as a transformative agent. This feminist, practice-based research project was mainly influenced by the history of ceramics as a cultural inheritance and qualities innate in clay as a material, as well as ideas of containment as discussed in Le Guin’s essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.” Keywords: craft, ceramics, clay, ceramic art, container, feminist research, lived experience, Le Guin, Wildenhain, Rie, feminist research, Existentialism,