Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, Pots, Pots, Pots

Notes on the Crawler Pots collection

“wow you write body horror really well!” ty I’m transgender

Twitter user @SomeBword March 24, 2021, 2:33 PM

The concept of pots being like bodies is an old and established truism in the ceramics practice. From the use of clay as a metaphor for how humanity was sculpted by deities to the naming conventions of ceramic vessels, the ceramic vessel has been a reflection of our corporeal human condition for time immemorial.

In many ways it was the body metaphor that drew me into using ceramics in my art practice and eventually led to becoming the core medium of my practice. As a trans artist seeking to make work about transness, and especially as someone who hails from THE Dutch pottery city Delft, using ceramics as the material for my work felt right and still manages to surprise me and reveal more of its depths bit by bit.

I would like to write a bit about my thinking behind my crawler pots collection. Don’t expect a step-by-step guide to how I make them, as the process is complex and I got to preserve some mystery am I right? This piece will be about my thinking behind this particular series of pots and how they fit into my understanding of myself as a trans artist making trans art.

In a nutshell the crawler pots are vessels with appendages either tentacle like or crab/spider like. They evoke deep see creatures and otherworldly sci-fi beings. They are made of porcelain with a white base glaze and various shades and layers of oxides give them a turquoise blue-ish colour. But most importantly, there is movement and life to them. There is a dynamism to the vessels and they appear like they’re caught in the middle of scuttling away.

These are vessels with their own animus. They are creatures with a sense of agency and autonomy. Not objects with clear use function instead they insist on their liveliness by having raised themselves of the surface onto these thin and lively legs. These are pots that reject a traditional reading of a pot as a purely inanimate object. The ‘life’ the crawler pots have gives them a sense of autonomy and rejection of their traditional reading as objects to be owned and used at one’s leisure. Their presence has to be negotiated, their fragile legs must be respected and given the space to sprawl. During the making process I have to constantly leave room for the porcelain appendages to move, while the clay is drying they move, when bisque fired they move and during the high gloss firing they move even more. Yes, I put a lot of care into giving the tentacles and legs a satisfying shape and direction but at the end of the day I freely give the pots to the kiln gods to breathe life into them. I believe the semi random free movement of the appendages in the kiln gives them such liveliness as their pose is not contrived but naturally found in the heat of the kiln.

I came to make these crawler pots because I was looking for things to do to subvert the traditional vessel and came up with this technique to make porcelain vessels stand on thin and tentacle like legs. I liked the idea of these pots as having outgrown their time as a stationary pot and have sprouted appendages to roam around. I think of the tentacles and crab legs as though they have grown out of the base of the pot, a body changed and demanding autonomy.

To me this project is inherently trans. It may not be as direct and clear-cut as some of my other work which references transness in very direct ways often even putting ‘trans’ right on the pot in words. The crawler pots are more conceptually trans. They’re all about changing bodies, different bodies and the subversion of what a body can look like and be.

There is an element of body horror to the vessels, they look like they squirm and scuttle, and if you have a phobia of octopuses and/or crabs/spiders they may send a slight chill down your spine. But I invite you to find the beauty in their strangeness.

Being trans can feel like a body horror film in a variety of ways. I have always described being a trans teen desperate to get on hormone blockers before your body gets irrevocably changed by puberty like living through the 1986 Cronenberg film The Fly. Your body is slowly changing in ways beyond your control and there is no stopping your slow descent into what your gender dysphoria makes you feel is a monstrosity. But transition and trans identity give control over how your body transforms and changes, turning the changing body into a site of empowerment.

I have always felt a great catharsis in watching films that include body horror and transforming bodies as a trans person as the lack of queer culture at my disposal as a teen meant it was the closest thing to actually exploring the emotional space of what it means to change your own body. Films like the Thing, the Fly and the Alien franchise with its HR Geiger aesthetic influences. The subversion of clear male/female dichotomy falls away in the design of the xenomorph and in Geiger’s work more broadly, the dichotomy between organic and artificial.

Now, most body horror looks at all this with a negative slant. Its horror in the end, it’s meant to be disturbing, but as a trans person, it felt liberating. So, in turn my vessels give me a way of twisting this around, making the body transformation into something attractive and desirable. Horror is in the eye of the beholder and if you find trans bodies horrific that lies with you, to me they are the most powerful statement to overcoming body horror, not in any way horrific in itself

We, as trans people, have a lot of experience with our bodies being seen as monstrous. Whether that is in our own mind as we are plagued by thoughts and feelings of gender dysphoria or wider society tells us our transitioning bodies are gross and undesirable. It is our job to overcome these views on trans bodies, especially our own bodies. It is only after I more or less ‘finished’ all the big steps of my transition and I cut myself loose from the medicalisation of my transition have I been able to reflect on transition and how profound it is and how the experience of enjoying my transition had been denied by doctors and society.

Transition is a powerful and profound experience. To go from hating your body to taking control over it and steering it into the shape you desire ought to be an empowering experience. Unfortunately, our society and medical gatekeeping makes transition something you have to fight for yet have to feel ashamed about. Yes, trans bodies are different, but that does not make them something to be pitied, it makes them something to celebrate and take pride in.

My lively little critters I create in my studio are my expression of beauty and power in transition. To challenge viewers to think beyond what was thought possible and to see beauty in transformation and what at first glance may be strange and different.