Clay Making and World-building (2021)
Harlesden High Street, London
This clay making and world-building workshop was hosted with artist Bones Tan Jones as part of their exhibition Dream Sigil, Stone Portal at Harlesden High Street in London, UK.
It took as a starting point the Chinese myth of Nüwa 女媧, who created humanity out of their loneliness. A deity with a snake body and human head, Nüwa existed alone on earth, in terrible need of companionship. They cried to the birds and fish, but no one answered. So they mixed clay with water to mold figures in their likeness, sculpting the first humans into being.
The workshop adopted clay-making as a speculative tool to sculpt spaces for communities to form. Participants were first guided through a set of rituals, combining the planetary alignments of different herbs, sounds and objects to inhabit a collective space. They then used clay to mold ‘sigils’ - symbolic representations of their desired universes, or outcomes.
Using play as a tool, the quest of the session was to form ‘sigil stones’ together: pre-mythic materials that open temporary portals to alternate universes. Each participant was to bring a deep desire that informed their worldview, using dreams to reimagine structures around collectivity and care.
It took as a starting point the Chinese myth of Nüwa 女媧, who created humanity out of their loneliness. A deity with a snake body and human head, Nüwa existed alone on earth, in terrible need of companionship. They cried to the birds and fish, but no one answered. So they mixed clay with water to mold figures in their likeness, sculpting the first humans into being.
The workshop adopted clay-making as a speculative tool to sculpt spaces for communities to form. Participants were first guided through a set of rituals, combining the planetary alignments of different herbs, sounds and objects to inhabit a collective space. They then used clay to mold ‘sigils’ - symbolic representations of their desired universes, or outcomes.
Using play as a tool, the quest of the session was to form ‘sigil stones’ together: pre-mythic materials that open temporary portals to alternate universes. Each participant was to bring a deep desire that informed their worldview, using dreams to reimagine structures around collectivity and care.
