Seven Conditions of the Gaze

The Vessel and the Gaze considers how identity is shaped when the self is encountered through digital fragments: images, gestures and moments separated from a larger embodied existence.

In a culture of hyper-visibility, we continually curate and circulate versions of ourselves. These representations become objects of perception, observed, interpreted and returned through the gaze of others. They shape how we are understood and, in turn, how we come to understand ourselves.

Drawing on the eye and the ocular system, the sculptural works translate the structures of perception into vessel form. Seeing becomes an act of receiving, holding and interpreting, giving material expression to the relationship between what is shown and what is perceived.

The series asks what happens when the part begins to stand in for the whole, and the record of an experience begins to displace the memory of having lived it.

Clay offers a material counterpoint to the circulating image. The vessels’ hand-worked surfaces, weight and spatial presence invite a physical encounter that exceeds representation. Through them, the work asks what it means to hold a sense of wholeness amid selective visibility, and where authenticity resides between the physical self and its fragmented image.