During this project I explored how we treat and value various objects.
When a material is molded into a utility in a factory, the role that the object will play in people’s lives is still open. The object can still become and mean anything.
This work shows shards (ca. 1897 and 1969) from the Sphinx factory, which were buried outside the city as ceramic waste after something went “wrong” during the production process. Shards, crafted from soil, ended up back in the soil.
This project is about the life cycle of these shards and what is not, but could have been. During the excavation, conversations were made with passer by about the value of the shards, the
value we attach to objects and how this often only becomes clear after we have thrown it away.
This work is a reconstruction of these personal experiences and offers a visual insight into what sometimes lies right under our feet.
*distances and proportions correspond to original location when found.
