Empty Houses

The project reflects on the language transmitted by an empty place.  Working with ruins of houses and observing them I thought that the subject could be placed in the area of a negative space, but later on I was able to see their content and the continuing life of an abandoned place in the absence of humans. I call them empty places but they are deep in my own perception.

I started by making a research on the development of the house structure and I noticed that the fireplaces have a central role in it. During the history, the fire place kept its importance in the first steps of building a house but also in the last ones. If a house burns down or starts to degrade, the chimney is a piece that usually remains intact. In the old times there were many associations with the long black tunnel that unites the inside of a room with the outside world. It could be a passage for mythological creatures to enter to your house or it could connect you as an individual with the community, a connection between sky and earth, a channel of communication or a sign for the presence of life.

In letting the smoke produced by burning leaves, branches and wood, stick to my ceramics pieces I wanted to illustrate this hidden act and drag a mystical feeling over them. The appearance of the black smoke adds a certainty to the myths that would be dissolved in the air if the porcelain constructions weren't there. The uncontrolled deposit of smoke is the border between presence and absence