By Elham Hemmat
Unique
‘This work tells a story of creation, not as a perfect beginning, but as the beginning of everything that makes us human.
At the centre, two figures stand closely together. Around them a world is forming, populated by human bodies, animals, plants and imagined creatures. Some are recognisable, while others seem to exist somewhere between different forms. I wanted everything to emerge together, before there was a clear boundary between the human, the animal, the natural and the unknown.
I have always been fascinated by creation myths and by our need to tell stories about where we came from. These stories are never only about the beginning of life. They carry the beginning of human experience too: love, desire, fear, instinct, curiosity, conflict and the unknown. In this work, all of these possibilities already exist around the central figures. The strange creatures are important because they give form to things that are much harder to name. They belong to an inner world as much as an imagined one. Some feel familiar and others unsettling, just as there are parts of ourselves we recognise immediately and others we struggle to understand or accept.
This is where the work connects to the idea of the Shadow. The moment we begin to understand ourselves as one thing, we also begin to separate ourselves from what we believe we are not. We form an image of who we are, but something always remains outside that image, hidden, instinctive or unknown.
The open structure of the ceramic allows another world to appear behind the figures. Light passes through the spaces and creates shadows where bodies overlap, distort and merge into one another. What seems separate in the ceramic becomes connected again in the shadow.
For me, the visible and the hidden are not two separate worlds. They are created at the same time, and both belong to us.’ -Hemmat
By Elham Hemmat
Unique
‘This work tells a story of creation, not as a perfect beginning, but as the beginning of everything that makes us human.
At the centre, two figures stand closely together. Around them a world is forming, populated by human bodies, animals, plants and imagined creatures. Some are recognisable, while others seem to exist somewhere between different forms. I wanted everything to emerge together, before there was a clear boundary between the human, the animal, the natural and the unknown.
I have always been fascinated by creation myths and by our need to tell stories about where we came from. These stories are never only about the beginning of life. They carry the beginning of human experience too: love, desire, fear, instinct, curiosity, conflict and the unknown. In this work, all of these possibilities already exist around the central figures. The strange creatures are important because they give form to things that are much harder to name. They belong to an inner world as much as an imagined one. Some feel familiar and others unsettling, just as there are parts of ourselves we recognise immediately and others we struggle to understand or accept.
This is where the work connects to the idea of the Shadow. The moment we begin to understand ourselves as one thing, we also begin to separate ourselves from what we believe we are not. We form an image of who we are, but something always remains outside that image, hidden, instinctive or unknown.
The open structure of the ceramic allows another world to appear behind the figures. Light passes through the spaces and creates shadows where bodies overlap, distort and merge into one another. What seems separate in the ceramic becomes connected again in the shadow.
For me, the visible and the hidden are not two separate worlds. They are created at the same time, and both belong to us.’ -Hemmat
