My ceramic practice as a votive practice
Anne-Marie Dehon, 2023
A few months ago, I suddenly understood that my craft was a votive practice: a wishfull practice for a world without technology.
An ex-voto is an object that we offer to the divinity to thank the god for a gift or to prevent something from happening in the future.
When I started ceramics twelve years ago, I had one wish: to participate in the creation of a world where the work of the hands had a place. It meant for me a world without technology and respectful of nature. This was and is still my wish for future.
In a way, my entire ceramic work is an ex-voto that carry the wish of a world with much less technology.
By defining it as an ex-voto I am questioning my practice: to make a wish does not mean that it will happen, neither that it has any impact on the reality. Is that not when the situation is desperate that we refer to a divinity? Is making ceramics a desperate whisper to protect an idealized nature? What is the meaning today to idealize nature while we destroy it by our way of life?
This reflects on my own practice of craft regarding to the destruction of nature by technology. The ceramic objects are the votive object, the wish carried by the craft. The picture represents the nature as it is (cf. Trolhättan project) or as we desire it to be (cf. Fragonard project). The project as a whole question the idealization of nature, the idealization of craft and his meaning today in a context of global warming.
---
An ex-voto can be defined as “a votive offering to a saint or a divinity, given in fulfillment of a vow (hence the Latin term, short for ex voto suscepto, "from the vow made") or in gratitude or devotion.”[1] This tradition exists all over the world in all times and traditions.
I searched the word ex-voto on the internet and I discovered that there exist four different ex-votos. First, the ex-voto is said suscepto when the material good is offered in gratitude for a granted wish or a commitment made. Second, the ex-voto is said propitiatory when this is an ex-voto intended to support a request to a deity, or a saint. Third, it is said gratulatory when the gift is given out of simple devotion and serves to thank for a grace obtained. And finally it is called surerogatory when it reminds us of the memory of the deity invoked, while waiting for the vow formulated but not yet fulfilled. [2]
My attention was first drawn by the ex-voto of the Andechs church in Germany while I was visiting the region as tourist four years ago. In the church, on the walls, many small paintings representing catastrophic disasters were hanged up. They could represent a fire in a house, or a boat tormented by a storm, a man hanging by a foot from a three. On the corner of the painting a Virgin Mary was standing in a golden halo. These paintings were for the most part of poor quality, technically speaking. Did the seamen paint them by themselves? In the church of La Rochelle in France, I found the same kind of paintings representing boats in storms. I imagine that, for the seamen living there, it was important to receive protection before going to sea.
These ex-votos made me curious: were the seamen representing the protection they received during a storm? or were they representing their greatest fear: the sinking of their boat or their house burning. In the Christian language, those ex-voto are then either propitiatory, suscepto or gratulatory. It is also curious that these paintings represent the vow, the object they want to protect. Here it is a boat, but it can also be a leg, a lung, a heart, a head, etc.
In Brussels, it exists a very small museum called “the museum of the heart”. Its exhibition is shown in one room of the historical and archeological museum of the city. The walls of this room are filled up with many ex-votos in the shape of a heart. They are made of different materials: gold, silver, metal, etc. The heart can represent, I think, either the heart of the Virrgin , either the heart of the person that would like to receive a protection to his or her organ.
Actually, my project did not start on the question of the ex-voto. It started with this question: “why am I interested in the question of nature and technology through ceramics?” I started to ask myself: what is the visual and sensual relationship between clay and the invasion of nature by technology?
While I was trying to give a shape to my relationship as a craftsperson to nature and the issue of the invasion of nature by technology, it came up in shape of an organ that should be protected in me. And it seemed to me that the desire for nature and its protection was located in my heart.
This shape of heart made me think about the practice of building or painting ex-votos, and that’s how suddenly all my previous experiences made sense. Suddenly I understood why, in a small wood box in my desk, I am keeping the pictures of these ex-votos I saw in Andechs. Why in La Rochelle I was so amazed by these poorly painted pictures of sinking boats. It sounded clear in my head: “my practice of ceramics is actually an ex-voto: a prayer for the future, a vow to protect nature’s beauty”. My practice is an propitiatory ex-voto: by making ceramics, I intend to receive the support a request to a deity that is to protect nature.
I started craft and ceramics ten years ago; it was in a farm community called “the Arch” in the south of France. They conceive of craftmanship as a way to lead a life with as less machines as possible, and as a way to raise the importance of the work of the hands. The name “Arch” refers to the story of Noah in the Bible. This name relates to that story because, like Noah did for animals, they intend to keep the practice of crafts alive for future.
My own practice of craft started in the same meaning: was it to protect the work of the hands against the danger that represented technology?
Technology represented a danger for me at that time for different reasons. I tried recently to make a personal definition of the complex word “technology” and I wrote: plastic, machine, fastness, efficiency, virtual, advertisement, newness, programmed obsolescence, security, transparency electricity, noise. All are for me dangerous for nature and our souls. Craft can be an alternative for these by proposing clay, hands, slowness, meditation, materiality, spirituality, beauty, mistakes, fragility, silence and darkness.
Technology represents a danger today for the environment as the cables and the infrastructure that it necessitates are crossing all around the globe with plastic, power plant energy infrastructures, etc.
Making ceramic with hand, living as a potter can be seen as outdated. Since the happening of industry, craft became “unnecessary”. The existence of craft today can be explained in different ways (Arendt 1989; M. Wilkinson-Weber and Ory DeNicola 2016; Livingstone and Petrie 2020). For my own sake, I turned to craft to make a wish: that the work of the hands could continue to exist in the world. In one way, craft protects me against a world dominated by technology and industry.
In his text “News from Nowhere” (Morris 2004) William Morris is telling a fictional story of a man arriving by chance on an island only ruled by craftspeople. This text has been written in 1890 during the industrial revolution. By entering this island, this man is entering a perfect world where nature and humans are living in harmony, and where humans are living in peace with each other. The author is describing this perfect world with as much details as possible, to make it possible, realistic.
The same pattern that pervades my own story can be seen here: W. Morris is using his fictional story of craft, which does not exist yet, in order to make a wish: that a world of craftspeople is possible and desirable. He is also making the wish that craft could protect us from industry and capitalism. In order to ask for this protection, he is not depicting the catastrophe but the ideal world he would want to see.
By devoting me to craft, in one way, I am wishing to show the world that the work of hands has a meaning for the future even if industry is everywhere. By devoting themselves to craft, the members of the Arch community are doing exactly the same: they create an ideal community of life, hoping for this to inspire and to be reproduced in a larger scale by other people in the future.
Nevertheless, this practice seems also a desperate try out to save something that is dying or maybe that is unavoidable. As the storm is unavoidable for the seamen, is the destruction of the nature and the disappearance of the craft also unavoidable? Is our dependency on technology unavoidable? I am not sure.
This is why these objects are my ex-votos.
Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah. 1989. The Human Condition. University Chicago Press.
Livingstone, Andrew, and Kevin Petrie, eds. 2020. The Ceramics Reader. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
M. Wilkinson-Weber, Clare, and Ory Ory DeNicola. 2016. Critical Craft : Technology, Globalization, and Capitalism. Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474224055.
Morris, William. 2004. News from Nowhere and Other Writings. Edited by Clive Wilmer. Repr. with a revised bibliographical note. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Yanagi, Soetsu. 1989. The Unknown Craftsman. Kodansha International.