Cross-cultural Identity Through Clay, Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Japan. 4/10/18 to 4/11/18 (Making the Tiles)

Setting up the studio.

Pressing clay into wooden moulds to produce sculptural tiles.

Removing the wooden mould to reveal the piece once the clay has dried slightly.

After the sculptural tile has been removed wooden boards are place around the piece to keep the form square whilst the clay is drying.

Sculptural tiles removed from the moulds and wooden boards and continuing to dry on the shelves.

All the tile pieces arranged to form a path to give us an idea of the progression.

For this project myself and my wife Wen-Hsi Harman have teamed up to create a sculptural tile project to be installed in the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park.

The idea behind this project is to create an artwork to symbolise a path. A path to act as a metaphor to cross into different countries and cultures from our experiences such as Taiwan, UK, Japan and Germany.

This project particularly refrences to Wen-Hsi's experience of living in between the UK and Taiwan. As a Taiwanese person living in the UK she can feel like she is not fully accepted within society in the UK. This distance can be because of ethnicity, accent and attitude. Likewise when she goes back home to Taiwan she can feel outside of the society as she has been living in the UK for nine years. Therefore her behaviour has taken on some British customs and her Taiwanese language has also changed too because of her length of stay in the UK. When Taiwanse people interact with her in Taiwan they often see her as not being completely Taiwanese.

As a result of her experience of living in-between two countries we would like to also talk about the gap an individual faces and because of this the sense of confusion of identity and belonging.

With regards to my own thoughts I appreciate the opportunity to explore different cultures but I also understand the challenges of a globalised world. How can a country keep hold of its cultual identity yet embrace people from other countries with different cultural backgrounds? What is the impact international companies have on the country of residence?