On Vulnerability

 

As part of the SPRING TEA event, guests and featured artists worked together to ritually cleanse 33 hand-cut porcelain tiles each one stained during a meditation on "vulnerability" for display as part of Davida Ingram's text-based exhibition stereotype (Mar 8 - Mar 29, 2014) at LxWxH Gallery in Georgetown. Natasha Marin worked closely with seasoned local ceramicist, Christopher Shaw, to produce this series.

 

Artist Statement: Natasha Marin
(creator of Miko Kuro's Midnight Tea)

 

This will be an attempt to reclaim the emotional territory of vulnerability. As a black woman, I am keenly aware that I have been denied the space of “Vulnerable,” within the vast landscape of stereotypes associated with my particular demographic. This is the beginning of an exploration into text-based ritual practice.

 

My work is a series of 33 ceramic tiles, each incorporating both handwritten text and human hair to be displayed as meditations on what it means to be vulnerable. I am interested in practice as a means to make learning indelible through muscle-memory. I look at this exhibition as an opportunity to hone my intention (to sustain a meditative space reserved for vulnerability, without self-criticism or judgment) through a process of repetition (creating the tiles, inking them with stain, firing them, adorning them with both real and synthetic hair).

 

The finished tiles, each approximately the size of a smartphone, will be hand-inked. The application of the black ceramic stain feels viscerally akin to calligraphy and the effect of the collection as a whole will be to demonstrate the fragility of the medium over time. In other words, it is likely that the viewer will be able to see the affect of the repetitive process of handling and managing the stain (which is highly volatile and difficult to control). I expect that the first tile will reveal the vulnerability of the hand that created it. Each subsequent tile will be an attempt to improve upon the last while maintaining, or preserving the somewhat sacred naiveté (or vulnerability) of the first.

 

Why include hair? Black hair is the most delicate and vulnerable of human hair types because it coils out from flat rather than round follicles. This effect is similar to pulling a ribbon over a scissor blade. The flatness of each emerging hair makes the shaft susceptible to breakage. Along these lines, the politics of black hair are coded with ideas of what it means to be beautiful and why that might matter in a society that holds appearances in such high esteem. I have collected both my hair and my daughter’s hair for several years, and incorporate this human material as a means to frame my own vulnerability in terms of my actual body and my lived experience in this body, thereby underscoring the link between the text and the physical self.

 

I am not sure I will achieve this. It may take several attempts.