A counter-hegemonic craft? Exploring the potency of porcelain in an anticolonial art practice

这个以实践为基础的研究项目将着眼于殖民商品的情感潜力，特别是瓷器，以挑战关于帝国历史和遗产的共识。它将从美学、哲学、政治学和社会学的角度对这一问题进行调查。我的艺术实践植根于工艺过程和材料的概念性使用，将是学术研究的试验台和展示，是其发展和传播不可或缺的一部分。我将探索瓷器作为一种雕塑材料的力量，以及它在多大程度上可以用来对抗占主导地位的殖民历史观--瓷器，这是一种具有象征价值的殖民商品，但不稳定，而且是白色的。这条研究路线是及时的、中肯的和紧迫的。现在，英国社会比以往任何时候都更需要与种族主义接触，我有兴趣探索艺术家如何为此做出贡献。正如保罗·吉尔罗伊所强调的那样，“种族和种族主义都不是少数民族的专属历史财产，他们是他们的主要受害者”。瓦解白人至上，揭露帝国历史的粉饰，不是有色人种的工作。白人必须做好这项工作，并认识到种族主义在很大程度上是一个当代问题。正如阿里埃拉·阿祖雷所说，我的目标是，这项研究将有助于“忘却帝国主义”。她的潜在历史将是我在这个项目中努力摆脱帝国主义认识方式的重要指南。我个人对创作殖民历史作品的兴趣源于我的大家庭有丰富的、但有时有争议的各种背景--来自殖民奴隶制分歧双方的祖先；对帝国与激进黑人争夺的声音怀旧。十多年来，帝国贸易原材料的概念性使用一直是我艺术实践的核心。我用殖民商品创作艺术的方法深深地植根于工艺思维，我打算利用这一学科来发展与这些原材料的亲密亲和力。我想发展我在金史密斯学院为我的硕士论文开始的研究，探索与‘充满活力’的事物接触的作用和影响。瓷器将是主要的参考，但我想应用工艺过程来获得甘蔗渣、棉花、胭脂虫、铜、青蓝、橡胶、茶叶、糖和盐的情感活力。这将成为我调查瓷器历史和特点所产生的纠葛和政治共鸣的基础。尽管西方特权收藏家和制造者对瓷器情有独钟，但瓷器具有令人担忧的象征意义，在对其历史的描述中没有得到充分的批评。埃德蒙·德·瓦尔在《白路》中略过了它与权力和特权的联系。但也许它的白色、感知的纯洁和原始的暴躁既可以体现政治上的白色，也可以与政治上的白色相抗衡，使其成为粉饰殖民历史的艺术展示的合适材料。

This practice-based research project will look at the affective potential of colonial commodities, with a particular focus on porcelain, to challenge the consensus on the history and legacy of empire. It will engage this line of enquiry from an aesthetic, philosophical, political and sociological perspective. My art practice, rooted in craft processes and the conceptual use of materials, will be both a testbed and exposé of the academic research, integral to its development and dissemination.I will explore the potency of porcelain, a colonial commodity laden with symbolic value, as a sculptural material, and to what extent it could be used to counter the dominant hegemonic, but precariously fragile and white, view of colonial history. This line of research is timely, pertinent and urgent. 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". Dismantling 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", as Ariella Azoulay puts it. Her Potential History will be a crucial guide in my efforts in this project to disengage from imperialism's ways of knowing. My personal interest in making work about colonial history stems from my extended family's rich, but sometimes contentious, mix of backgrounds - ancestors from both sides of the colonial slavery divide; vocal nostalgia for empire vying with bouyant radical blackness. The conceptual use of the raw materials of imperial trade has been at the heart of my art practice for over 10 years. My approach to making art with colonial commodities is deeply engrained with craft thinking and I intend to use this discipline to develop an intimate affinity with these raw materials. I would like to develop research I began for my Masters dissertation at Goldsmiths College that explored the agency and affect of engaging with 'vibrant' matter. Porcelain will be the main reference, but I want to apply craft processes to access the affective vibrancy of bagasse, cotton, cochineal, copper, indigo, rubber, tea, sugar and salt. This will form the basis of my investigation into the entanglements and politically resonant discourses that their history and characteristics generate.Fetishised as it is by privileged Western collectors and makers, porcelain has a fraught symbolism that has not been adequately critiqued in accounts of its history. Its associations with power and privilege are skated over by Edmund de Waal in The White Road. But perhaps its very whiteness, perceived purity and raw fractiousness can both embody and contest political whiteness, making it an apt material for an artistic exposé of the whitewashing of colonial history.