About

This interdisciplinary, practice-based research takes an aesthetic, philosophical, political and sociological approach. I am exploring the potency of porcelain, a colonial commodity laden with symbolic value, as a sculptural material to counter hegemonic whiteness and the precariously fragile and white view of colonial history. Now, more than ever, UK society needs to engage with racism, and I am interested in exploring how artists can contribute to this. As Paul Gilroy emphasises, “neither race nor racism are the exclusive historical property of the minorities who are their primary victims” (Gilroy, 2005). Dismantling the structures and institutions that uphold white supremacy and exposing the whitewashing of imperial history is not the job of people of colour. White people must do the work and recognise that racism is very much a contemporary problem. My aim is that this research will contribute to an “unlearning of imperialism” (Azoulay, 2019) and a greater understanding of the role of whiteness in ongoing structural oppression. Porcelain, cherished as it is for its ‘purity’, becomes an apt material and concept to embody, expose and contest social, cultural and historically constructed ideologies of whiteness. My practice-based research explores how the properties of porcelain – its fractiousness and vulnerability when raw, its strength, whiteness and translucency when fired – can embody and interrogate terms such as fragility and innocence explored through ideologies of whiteness identified by DiAngelo (2018) and Wekker (2016), among others. The artistic outcomes of this research need to be as widely accessible as possible, so I am investigating suitable public, plural spaces for its display and dissemination.