CRITICAL REFLECTION
The Idea of Containers and Questions
I realized that when I think of my love for different people and things, I imagine it in a container and I have different containers in my mind for each type of love. Painting containers and thinking about my questions about love formed my first painting about containers.
Where do I keep my love for people around me? Do I have bigger containers for people that I love more? How are these containers different from each other? Can I keep my love in a box or will it spill out? Does love need to breath or should I close the cap for it to not evaporate? What do I do when I don’t want to love someone anymore? Do I break the container or do I pour the love on the ground? What will happen if I pour it on the ground? Will it disappear or will it leave a big stain that won’t be cleanable? Where do I keep these containers? Do I have a shelf for them? Do I have different shelves or is it just one? How does the shelf look like? Do people have different containers for love or are we all similar in our choices for the way we keep our loves?
Questions about what container can be used for each kind of love
In order to find a way for depicting and researching through the possible answers for these questions I experimented. First, I painted some of the containers I liked from my watercolour painting on canvas and cut them. Then made a wooden 2D shelf for them and hung the containers in a way that looked like they were floating on the shelves. I didn’t find this a successful approach but it had positive and negative points. On one hand, I started experimenting with new material in a way that I had never done and I began to get out of the frames of a traditional painting. On the other hand, the narrative I had in mind was not present in the work. It didn’t look like how I imagined it in my mind and the materials where not working in the way I was expecting. I realized that I need to decide much more carefully about materials and care about the details of my artwork by planning and analysing more carefully. As each of these details could convey a message to the viewer and I could use them for my own purposes.
Wooden shelf and containers
Found wood, oil colour on canvas
2022
150x80 cm
I visited Louise Bourgeois’s exhibition at Hayward Gallery around this time and was so touched by her use of material and her sensitive use of metaphors. As she said: “Life is made of experiences and emotions. The objects I have created make them tangible.” (Wye et al., 2017)
Her way of depicting her lived experiences in the form of metaphors that could be familiar for even someone from a very different culture (like me!) was fascinating for me. As Louise Bourgeoise says about her use of needles in her artworks: “When I was growing up, all the women in my house were using needles. I have always had a fascination with the needle, the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair the damage. It’s a claim to forgiveness.” Needle becomes a metaphor for repairing and mending. Something that comes from her personal life speaks a universal language and helps her audience to go back to their experiences as well and see them in this form. Art was the tool, and making it was empowering. It allowed her, she said, “to re-experience the fear, to give it a physicality so I am able to hack away at it. Fear becomes a manageable reality.”
Bourgeois’s use of soft materials – including the ‘second skin’ of her own clothes – often imbues these works with a sensuous quality and an almost tactile sense of vulnerability and intimacy. She saw the actions involved in fabricating them in metaphorical terms, relating the cutting, ripping, sewing and joining to notions of reparation and to the bodily expression of psychic tensions. As the daughter of tapestry restorers, the artist’s turn to textiles in her eighties could be seen as a renewed exploration of her past. At the same time, her fabric works invite us to reimagine the meanings of mending, including a concept of emotional repair that – rather than neatly sewing everything up – can expand and refresh our perspectives. (Hayward Gallery-Southbank Center)
Personally, I liked her use of familiar materials. Even without touching the pieces I could imagine the softness of fabrics and coolness of metal and this definitely had an impact on my take from the artworks. The familiarity of textile and cloths and the fact that we use them frequently everyday was helping with the intimate feeling that was imbedded in her pieces and it also invited the viewers to look at the everyday objects in a new light.
Slowly I dared to use materials that I didn’t have much experience with but seemed more suitable for what I had in mind. My start with a low-quality air-dry clay was not that successful. The clay was and felt very artificial and didn’t resemble the earthy and natural feeling I had in mind. The second type of air-dry clay that I purchased was much closer to what I was looking for and I managed to make the first completed series of my love containers.
Love containers
Air-dry clay
2022
3x3x3 cm to 10x10x10 cm
Unsuccessful first draft of my love containers with air-dry clay
Because of Iran’s ancient history and its traditional artcrafts, I am used to seeing pottery in different shapes and forms in cultures of different parts of Iran. One of these ancient ceramics are from Kalpoorgan village, a fascinating village, located in Sistan and Baloochestan province in southeast of Iran has recently nominated as the first handicraft village in the world. What attracts the attention of the world to the Kalpoorgan pottery is the making of pottery without use of a pottery wheel, so that all the pottery is done with traditional, primitive methods by Baloch women. The abstract roles and motifs have been inspired from ancient paints and are completely geometric reminiscent of historic art of that area. The warm harmony between the reddish shade of the potteries and the brown motifs make these crafts more and more eye catching. These potteries with their amazing patterns have been transmitted to the next generations without any change in the way they are made. Local artists have still kept the simple yet expressive method of creating these pieces of art. (uppersia, n.d.)
Kalpoorgan ceramics
Pottery museum in Kalpoorgan,Sistanbaloochestan,Iran
After posting an image on my Instagram page of my love containers I got a message from an Iranian follower who said: “Iranians have been making love containers from 5000 years ago. I think they are glad that you are following their path.” This message meant a lot to me because it was clear that my viewer had made a connection between my pieces and ancient Iranian ceramics.
Each of the pieces in my love container series were made based on a personal relationship with people and things in my life. The containers for my love for my mom and dad are the only ones that have handles because I believe my love for my parents is so deep and irreplaceable that I will take these containers with me wherever I go. They are also the only ones that have carvings on them. مامان (mom) and بابا (dad) are carved into these containers in my mother tongue language, Persian. I have a container for my love for my family which is made of three connected vessels. By filling one of them the other two will be filled as well. The container I keep my love for my best friend in has carved lines in it and each of those lines show a different stage of our relationship and it is a mark that was made by the amount of love I’ve had for her in each stage. The container for pretentious love has a small plate with a crack so not much love can be poured into it but it has long legs, pulling the plate up and tries to show it off. Another container is for keeping toxic love and one for one sided love. The container for one sided love doesn’t have a bottom so when love is poured into it all of it would come out and spill.
For my mom
For my dad
For my brother
For my family
For my homeland, Iran
For my best friend
For my ex partner
For one-sided love
For pretentious love
For toxic love
I decided to make my love containers again but this time with terracotta clay and glaze them. Terracotta’s colour is the closest to the clay that is used in Iran traditionally for making ceramics, just like Kalpoorgan ceramics. In the first stages of my research, I visited Victoria and Albert Museum and by carefully observing my feelings towards ceramics from various parts of the world, I focused on the familiarity I felt towards the colours, forms and materials of Iranian ceramics. This observation and research were used as a reference for me in different stages of designing and making my objects because belongingness is a very important matter in the topic I am working on. I did extended research about the concept of belongingness and how it is related to landscape and where we grow up, in my presentation at UAL x OCAD conference named Landscape and Belongingness.
.jpg)
Using images of Iranian ceramics exhibited at V&A as references for colour, forms and materials
Love containers second version
Glazed terracotta
2022
5x5x5 cm to 15x15x15 cm
In the glazed version of my love containers, some details have been improved and I could finally pour a liquid in them without risking damaging them. It was at this stage that I found out a sense of intimacy and touch plays a significant role in the feeling these objects convey and I can capture this sense by recording videos of my hand touching them and pouring things into them.
In this version for containers for my dad and mom, handles were designed differently, drawings and glaze were added to them
Channels between the pots became more advanced and useable for liquid being poured into them
Colour and glaze were added
Colour, drawings and glaze were added and the design changed
Colour, drawings and glaze were added and the design changed. Holes have different sizes in this design and they are not as frequent as the previous version, as I thought about how each of these holes were made by a different incident in my past.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
References:
Eavar travel. (2019). Kalpourgan Village, the first handicraft village in the world by WCC. [online] Available at: https://www.eavartravel.com/en/blog/2019/7/13/130494/kalpourgan-village/ [Accessed 4 Jun. 2022].
Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child. Hayward Gallery, Southbank Center. Exhibition’s statement.
uppersia (n.d.). Kalpoorgan:Heart of Iranaian Pottery. [online] Available at: https://www.irantourtravel.com/2017/10/kalpoorganheart-of-iranaian-pottery.html [Accessed 4 Jun. 2022].
Wye, D., Lowry, G.D., Gorovoy, J., Harlan, F., Shiff, B. and Sewon Kang (2017). Louise Bourgeois : an unfolding portrait : prints, books, and the creative process : [exhibition, New York, The Museum of modern art, september 24, 2017 - january 28, 2018 ]. New York: The Museum Of Modern Art.