Lauren Kalman: To Have or to Hold…, 2024
The title To Have or To Hold… is derived from traditional wedding vows and explores embodied responses to loss of control, fear, social dissonance, and the desire for human connection. The project is a meditation on building, control, and destruction. The precariousness of life. The desire to hold close. The ability to smother.
To Have or To Hold… is comprised of performance videos and ceramic objects. I produce wheel thrown ceramic vessels that I distort through holding or compressing in the negative spaces of my body. The carefully controlled form of the vessel is lost with the imprint of the body leaving both a permanent distortion of the original form and the lasting imprint of the absent body. Once the vessels are formed, they are not altered; tension cracks, folds, and textures are all fired in place.
This project was supported the Wayne State University Humanities Center Faculty Fellowship Program
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