Before It Happens
4.7” x 4.7” x 3.1”
Ceramics, super glue, epoxy clay
2018
A classical Asian ceramic bowl, once used in everyday meals, carries the familiarity of home, culture, and origin.
It is dropped, struck, and smashed apart. Piece by piece, the fragments are glued back together, trying to make something whole from what can no longer return to its original form.
Then it is broken again, into smaller pieces.
The cracks become scars. The scars are ripped open before they have time to heal. Each repair is followed by another wound, another attempt to gather the pieces of myself.
I once believed that entering a new culture meant simply learning how to belong, without questioning who I was. Some things are broken by the world around us, some things we break ourselves.
In the end, this tilted but still identifiable as a bowl is like hidden wounds surviving from being broken. In the process of repeated injury and repair, are those tears and scars rebirth or unexploded bombs?
