Han-Chiao

Han‑Chiao’s poetry is a broad game of balance. On the one hand, there is her archaic-inspired ceramic production and, on the other hand, her photographic work with its mysterious grain. A global practice, in two times, which tells her intimate universe, hovering between tradition and modernity.

A Taiwanese-born artist with a multidisciplinary background, Han‑Chiao first came in contact with clay during her photography studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She would find her way back to it a few years later, as a matter of course, after moving to Paris and working as a photographer in the fashion industry. If working on the image allowed her to sharpen her eye and develop her pictorial touch, ceramics enabled her to reveal herself in a more profound, intimate way.

She shares vulnerability, restlessness, lost roots, and the sense of being emotionally naked. She takes the viewer on an introspective journey, between roughness and delicacy, telling a story she composes, like a therapy. Starting with elementary shapes, Han-Chiao brings a touch of singularity to her creations – Siamese vases, carnivorous jars, sets of handles, drips of enamel – producing unique pieces with subtle flaws. She looks to the prehistoric age of ceramics, combined with the elegance of Chinese porcelain. Her vessels, which she creates by throwing clay on a wheel, are made from black sand and glazed in white zinc oxide. The material makes them look like Shang-dynasty ritual bronze vessels, or Han‑dynasty pottery excavated from a grave.

Han-Chiao enjoys working with silhouettes, tall, robust, and well curved. She sometimes needs days to figure out how the piece will turn out, which says a lot about the intuitive practice of ceramics: the time, gesture, and beauty of the relationship between the craftsman and her material.