Alive & Unfolding contemporary ceramics exhibition at le Delta, Namur

Alive & Unfolding contemporary ceramics exhibition is on view at le Delta, Namur

May 17 – August 17, 2025

Le Delta is thrilled to present Alive & Unfolding, a contemporary ceramics exhibition featuring the works of twenty-two artists from fourteen countries. Curated by Vasi Hirdo, the founder of Ceramics Now, the exhibition is organized as part of the Perspectives Festival of Ceramic Art Andenne.

Featuring: Jasmin Anoschkin (FI), Natalia Arbelaez (US), Emily Yong Beck (US), Eric Croes (BE), Claire Curneen (UK), Sien Godderis (BE), Faye Hadfield (UK), Mahala Hill (AU), Myung-Joo Kim (KR), Ahryun Lee (KR), Claire Lindner (FR), Hélène Loussier (FR), Martin Neubert (DE), Irene Nordli (NO), Sayaka Oishi (JP), SunYoung Park (KR), Paolo Porelli (IT), Elsa Sahal (FR), Bente Skjøttgaard (DK), Carl Richard Söderström (SE), Johan Tahon (BE), Anne Wenzel (NL)

Curated by Vasi Hirdo

Alive & Unfolding is an exploration of contemporary ceramics, where each artwork emerges as an extension of the artist’s experience, telling a story that speaks to deeper emotional and existential dimensions. The exhibition presents a vibrant collection of sculptures that challenge the boundaries between the figurative and the abstract, inviting viewers into a poetic world where human, animal, and cryptic forms come alive.

The works in this exhibition embody personal narratives, experiences, and reflections, each revealing details of stories that unfold before your eyes. With a strong sense of materiality, these works reflect the lifescapes of the artists, offering more than just an aesthetic experience—they draw self-reflection and engagement. Through both striking and intimate forms, the exhibition navigates themes of fragility and strength, often juxtaposing raw, instinctive processes with exceptional abilities to work with clay. Some pieces draw inspiration from the natural world, evoking landscapes, matter, and ecosystems, while others grapple with existential themes—examining life, death, and rebirth.

The concept of “unfolding” resonates throughout the exhibition, not only in the physicality of the presented works but also in their themes. We are invited to witness the interplay of opposites: delicate yet monumental, familiar yet strange, playful yet somber, static yet in motion. These dualities reflect the tensions of the human condition, and what better way to absorb and communicate different points of view than through ceramics?

Jasmin Anoschkin‘s exuberant, brightly colored figures draw from folk art and pop culture, exploring difference and emotional intensity through naïve, hybrid animal forms. Natalia Arbelaez weaves together familial narratives and pre-Columbian imagery in deeply personal, often surreal self-portraits that speak to diasporic identity and memory. Claire Curneen crafts fragile porcelain figures that draw on Renaissance painting and sacred iconography, evoking suffering, mystery, and vulnerability.

Eric Croes blends human and animal forms into hybrid bestiaries, bringing play, chance, and cultic symbolism into conversation with craftsmanship. Faye Hadfield subverts classical ceramic forms through playful distortions and expressive surface treatments, creating vessels that sit somewhere between the grotesque and the whimsical. Mahala Hill‘s ‘burn out’ process transforms organic materials into phantom-like ceramic remains, prompting reflection on environmental fragility and impermanence.

Ahryun Lee merges art and design in joyful, sensorial objects, her vivid forms rich in tactile surface treatments and cross-cultural reference. Claire Lindner‘s sculptures explore movement, metamorphosis, and the connection between natural and living forms. Her work blurs the boundaries between animal, vegetal, and anthropomorphic elements, capturing transitions between liquid and solid, interior and exterior, and the physical and the psychic. Hélène Loussier‘s work is rooted in her painting background and her desire to give shape to uncertain memories. Her ceramic figures blend plant, animal, and human features, like gentle monsters or creatures from imaginary tales.

Myung-Joo Kim creates poetic ceramic worlds where Asian animism and European iconography coexist in imaginative, dreamlike beings. Her work bridges continents and consciousness, evoking the personal as universal. Sien Godderis sculpts from personal memory and subconscious tension, allowing instinct and accident to shape her emotionally charged, fragmentary forms. Her surfaces, layered with pencil and ink, oscillate between transparency and depth, often incorporating symbolic motifs.

Martin Neubert builds expressive ceramic figures from collaged parts, honoring the emotional weight and dignity of social outsiders. His work captures vulnerability with empathy, reminding us of the beauty in imperfection. Irene Nordli‘s visceral, amorphous forms blur the bodily and the geological, embracing the grotesque as a space for transformation, inviting viewers into a space that is both unsettling and strangely familiar.

Sayaka Oishi finds rhythm in ornamentation, combining flora, fauna, and corporeal motifs into spiritual ceramic compositions that echo nature’s pulse. Her decorative language reveals the instinctive, meditative process behind ornamentation as a form of expression. SunYoung Park blends ceramics with mixed media to craft ambiguous forms that question the boundaries of material and meaning, encouraging imagination to fill the gaps between form and narrative.

Paolo Porelli‘s sculptures act as metaphors for modern social anxieties, blending surrealism, found objects, and archaic symbolism into a contemporary mythology. His work critiques contemporary culture while honoring the symbolic depth of ancient form. Elsa Sahal challenges gendered expectations with biomorphic forms that evoke bodies in flux, confronting viewers with sensuality and fragmented identity. Bente Skjøttgaard creates forms inspired by natural forces—clouds, minerals, and aquatic movement—infusing them with geological textures and kinetic energy, her experimental glazes both delicate and volcanic.

Carl Richard Söderström shapes forms that hover between ancient memory and futuristic abstraction, emphasizing materiality and subconscious form. His glazes, cracks, and forms suggest fossilized futures and psychic landscapes. Johan Tahon‘s elongated, mystical figures reflect spiritual longing and awakening, drawing inspiration from classical and modern sculpture alike. His work resonates with timeless presence and fragile transcendence.

Anne Wenzel‘s monumental works address themes of power and decay, sculpting collapsed monuments and floral ruins to question permanence and authority. Her use of ceramics as a language of ruin speaks to both political critique and aesthetic seduction. Emily Yong Beck‘s subversive ceramic sculptures utilize cartoon imagery and kitsch aesthetics to critique cultural erasure, violence, and generational silence. Her vibrant, often disarming pieces challenge assumptions and demand deeper engagement with what lies beneath surface appearances.

At its core, the exhibition is a meditation on the processes of change, the ceramic works serving as metaphors for transformation, offering new perspectives on the figurative, often through abstract or surreal forms. These pieces can be seen as living entities that engage the viewer in an allegorical play where creation, destruction, and rebirth coexist. As these forms unfold, they challenge our perceptions, leaving room for personal interpretations and reflections on the shared conditions of existence, the natural world, and the endless possibilities of expression in ceramics.

Alive & Unfolding offers a profound journey into the world of contemporary ceramics, showing how this medium transcends its material origins to reflect the complexity of human experience. The exhibition invites reflection on the power of ceramics to transform simple forms into profound statements, offering an opportunity to engage with the works and the stories they tell.

— Text by Vasi Hirdo

Thanks to Hostler Burrows / HB381 Gallery (New York), Mindy Solomon Gallery (Miami), Florian Daguet-Bresson (Paris), Galerie Papillon (Paris), Galerie Maria Lund (Paris), Galerie NeC (Paris), Kunstforum Solothurn (Solothurn), Sorry We’re Closed (Brussels) for their support in organizing this exhibition.

Organized by le Delta as part of the Perspectives Festival of Ceramic Art Andenne 2025.

The exhibition is on view at le Delta’s 7ème Ciel (7th Sky) space, open Tuesday to Friday from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm and on weekends from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. Entry is free.

Contact
info@ledelta.be
vasi@ceramicsnow.org

le Delta
Avenue Fernand Golenvaux, 18
5000 Namur
Belgium

Captions

Installation views, Alive & Unfolding at le Delta, Namur, 2025. Photos 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 by Julien Bauwens. Courtesy of le Delta
Ahryun Lee, Pingo, 2024, Porcelain, High-fired colored stain, Engobe, Glaze, 1260°C oxidation firing, 39 x 23 x 50 cm
Anne Wenzel, Damaged Goods (Bust; Large / Red #01), 2013, ceramics, 115 x 67 x 54 cm. Courtesy of Galerie AKINCI and Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve
Bente Skjøttgaard, Timberline #2332, 2023, Stoneware with glaze, 51 x 62 x 64 cm. Photo Ole Akhøj. Courtesy of Galerie Maria Lund
Carl Richard Söderström, Don’t cry, Cry baby, 2022, Stoneware, glaze, 68 x 63 x 41 cm. Courtesy of Galerie NeC Paris
Claire Curneen, Rise, 2020, porcelain, height 70 cm. Photo: Sylvain Deleu
Claire Lindner, Battement d’ailes n°3, 2024, glazed stoneware, 36 × 39 × 32 cm. Courtesy of Daguet-Bresson
Elsa Sahal, Les oiseaux, 2023, ceramic, glaze, 50 x 37 x 17 cm. Photo by Grégory Copitet. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Papillon
Emily Yong Beck, Friends 4 Ever Pot, 2025, Stoneware, 48 x 29 x 29 cm
Faye Hadfield, Happy Vase in Pastel Blue, 2024, Porcelain with gold and platinum lustre, 54 x 41 x 23 cm
Hélène Loussier, Espoir Rose, 2024, glazed stoneware, gold, 60x31x31 cm
Irene Nordli, Cephalopoda, 2024, glazed porcelain, 47 x 45 x 37 cm
Jasmin Anoschkin, Eucalyptus Grate Pet, 2021, glazed stoneware, 57 x 96 x 40 cm. Courtesy of HB381 Gallery
Johan Tahon, Sun, 2022, Stoneware and epoxy, 186 x 38 x 85 cm
Mahala Hill, Apocalypse Unfolding I, 2024, Bone china, clay, glaze, 8 x 22 x 30 cm. Photo: Andrew Sikorski
Martin Neubert, Jürgens Vater, 2023, clay, clip, glaze, 43 x 38 x 22 cm
Myung-Joo Kim, Nostalgie IX, 2024, Stoneware, glaze, 106 x 65 x 50 cm. Courtesy of Galerie Kunstforum Solothurn
Natalia Arbelaez, Cara Cula, 2023, Red clay, Majolica and gold luster, 66 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm. Courtesy of The Artist and Mindy Solomon Gallery
Paolo Porelli, Sacred wood, 2024, Glazed and slipped terracotta, hand-built, wheel-thrown & slipped organic material, variable dimensions
Sayaka Oishi, MANEKINEKO -justice-, 2023, ceramic, 18 x 17 x 31.5 cm
Sien Godderis, Herstemd Mankement, 2024, Stoneware, plaster, mixed media, 111 x 70 x 32 cm
SunYoung Park, Withering and Blooming, 2023, cold finished ceramic, partially glazed, 48 x 20 x 20 cm