How did your Japanese experience influence your work?
A new relationship with the world emerged when I lived in Japan. The study of the tea ceremony, intrinsically related to Zen philosophy and Wabi-Sabi, opened the door to question, confrontation and acceptance of the ephemerality of ceramics as a sculptural element.
In what way are you influenced by where you live?
For a long time my aesthetic inspiration was linked to an aquatic sensibility, since I spent much of my life near the coast or on islands (Azores, Japan, England). When I did an artist-in-residency programme in Namibia in 2015, I was seduced by the wind, the aridity and the rocky surfaces, and I started to explore this different, almost opposite world.
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Where else do you find inspiration?
I am most inspired by the ways we can relate to art objects; how we perceive them, why we cannot touch them. I make my objects in order to challenge this dogma and how the public perceives these objects when they can touch them.
What defines your contemporary approach to ceramics?
It's about the relationship between the public and the object. Sometimes it's only a beautiful piece, but if you touch it, it produces sound, like my Kodama project. Sometimes it's an object that you can slip under, like the Cerafuton, a blanket entirely made from ceramic tiles.