How do you wedge your clay? Who taught you to do it that way? Have you somehow changed or nuanced this method over time? Did your technique shift in response to material behavior or environmental conditions? Ancient cultures encountered working with clay and noticed that fire would transform it into ceramic; in turn, this transformed the way they engaged with clay. While much knowledge has been transferred via observation, exchanges, human mediation, and teaching lineages, a vast amount of knowledge is imprinted upon us by the clay itself. The material holds a complexity of knowledge.

In this Studio Session, we will survey the many ways that knowledge is generated, transferred, and acquired, as well as explore the hidden messages and stories within these processes. We will use archaeological and historical material, speculative conversations, and experiments with clay and body memory to explore the fundamental movements, patterns, and processes that have been acquired and codified over generations. This is an investigation into material agency and the ecological heritage between materials and beings.

Désirée Coral (b. 1981 in Quito, Ecuador) earned her MFA in Ceramics from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was a student at the Moncloa School of Ceramics in Madrid (where she learned “the craft”), and completed her undergraduate studies in Visual Arts at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Quito. Coral is currently a PhD candidate at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design at the University of Dundee in Scotland UK, where she investigates the material relationship between human and non-human beings through color and its materiality. She has exhibited and published internationally.

This Studio Session took place in March 2023.