[Re-]Creative rites: exploring the materiality of clay and its making processes

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since earliest known histories, the materiality of clay together with its processes of transformation to ceramics has presented itself as a metaphor for the human self. In this article, I use process philosophy to interrogate the intersection between ceramics practice and the processes of becoming and transitioning. Through my own studio explorations of ceramics, I analyse the material quality of clay and demonstrate how distinct themes that can be inferredfrom its making processes parallel those of rites of passage. In doing so, I argue that as a reflective practice, the ceramic process lends itself to transformations and transitioning common to rites of passage. Acknowledging my positionality as a black female of Igbo descent, I critique the Phalli Series, a set of thirteen clay phallus objects that I created and exhibited, to problematise and reflect on select circumcision and Baptismal rites of passage in (South) Africa.