With Sinkhole Vessels Liliana Ovalle sought to create forms which showed the hidden topography of sinkholes. The clay forms and the wooden frames that suspend them illustrate sudden bellowing voids within the earth. The edition of ten pieces was displayed at the Libby Sellers Gallery during London Design Festival 2013.
Ovalle, a designer based in London, was born in Mexico City in 1977. She collaborated on the project with Colectivo 1050º, an artisan collective from Oaxaca, Mexico, who employed ancestral techniques and skills in the production of the vessels. Ovalle maintains that this tradition is “struggling to find a place in the contemporary global landscape.” She sees the vessels both as describing an awe-inspiring and terrifying natural phenomena as well as the threat facing traditional artisans such as those who produced the vessels. “By making reference to different processes of extinction, the Sinkhole project aims to reflect and extend the permanence of what seems to be inevitably falling into a void,” she states.
Above image: Liliana Ovalle and Colectivo 1050º, Sinkhole Vessels, 2013. Clay and wood. Courtesy of Libby Sellers Gallery.
Liliana Ovalle and Colectivo, Sinkhole Vessels, 2013. Clay and wood. Images courtesy of Libby Sellers Gallery.
Alberta and Dorotea of Colectivo 1050º mold the Sinkhole Vessels on plates which are balanced by rocks and spun by hand.
Tools succh as leather and corn cobs were used to shape and spin the clay.
The artisans achieved the black color of the vesels by exposing them directly to flames for about an hour after they had already been fired. Production photographs by Kytzhia Barrera and Liliana Ovalle.
A typical open firing of clay in San Marcos Tlapazola. Video courtesy of Colectivo 1050º.
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