Away,Away. Safia Hijos

The works have been made during my recent artistic residency at the Limoges School of Fine Arts where there is a beautiful workshop dedicated to porcelain and casting. Result of this research around the repetition of the same, each wing plays its own rhythm feather after feather.

As often, stories and words remain for me important stimulus of creation. The porcelains featured in this exhibition are inspired by the myth of Icarus, which has been translated into a contemporary variation saluting the animal sculptures of Johann Joachim Kändler, the famous modeler from Meissen in the 18th century. It is a bit like working in the manner of Max Richter on Vivaldi’s compositions, to make a musical parallel.

Flirting with porcelain becoming enamel is also what I was looking for during my residency. Bringing the material to gradually deform, bend, melt under the effect of the heat of the kiln to, like Icarus, test the limits of the material, the limits of a form, the limits of the artist.

Finally, to truly endorse the myth, a customized overalls evokes my way of working as a ceramist always in search of the supposedly liberating artefact… It is a way of embodying this story and putting it in parallel with one’s own existence. Thus, movement, or its absence, is everywhere, including in the name of the exhibition. Just by Remaining Motionless, Without Ever Moving – the titles of the wall installations also seek to express both the absolute rigidity of the clay once fired and the light palpitation of the plumage.

Away, away! No, no, away!
To Death I’ll fly
If longer you delay;

Didon et Enée, Henri Purcell

Safia Hijos