Becoming Plastic 2022 Benyamini Contemporary Ceramics Center

Becoming Plastic

Jacaranda Kori

Curator: Ayelet Zohar, PhD

The exhibition Becoming Plastic: From Nature to Waste, is an installation of 27 ceramic objects suspended from the ceiling, between heaven and earth, giving a sense of flotation and the possibility of looking at hovering objects from an underwater viewpoint. This enables a disengagement from the existential and mundane, for the sake of focusing on the understanding of human existence. The installation engages with the dystopian processes that the planet is experiencing in the Anthropocene. From a world of hope and desire for progress, to the realisation over the past few years of the great tragedy of Earth: fossil fuel emissions, air pollution, and the plastic industry are the biggest and toughest polluters of the natural environment, which will eventually destroy our planet's delicate balance.

The concept “Becoming Plastic” is inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s writings, placing particular emphasis on the term becoming in their philosophy. This concept reflects their strong belief in process and continuous change: no being is fixed, and no position is stable. All things are in a constant flux of transformation, and these shifts are what they termed becoming. For Deleuze and Guattari, this perpetual state of altering is the essence of human and natural existence, emphasising the perpetual motion of diversifying, repetition, and the creation of differences.

Plastic, in many ways, is the conceptual antithesis of ceramic. The resurgence of ceramic as a material in contemporary art embodies a desire to return to human proportion, a natural and nostalgic antidote to a world defined by its inhuman, accelerating pace.

With a longing for working with one’s hands and the use of natural materials, working and creating simple vessels and containers (mostly), Kori inverses the process, and appropriates ceramics in a cruel way, forcing it to become plastic. She does not spare us and is not part of the “back to nature” type of festivities. Kori uses the clay and makes it become what we will all become: plastic. This is a dystopian attitude, which manifests the process of loss in which we live, and the potential destruction encompassed in each move we make.

‘Becoming Plastic’ works against the popular image and assumption of the qualities and purpose of ceramic. Turning ceramic into plastic and using various plastic accessories to create casts or physical parts are the guidelines for Kori’s actions. The transition from the warmth of ceramic to the chill of plastic, from the grey earthiness of the clay to the luminous colours of the coated plastic, could have become a celebration of colour. However, within the context of Kori’s endeavour, it becomes a toxic experience, that of poison spilling into the environment. The combination of cast clay, perishable techniques, peeling shiny colours, plastic containers used as the mold and the resulting residue are all at the heart of Kori’s oeuvre.