Hawaiian artist Toshiko Takaezu’s skill in the art of ceramics was honed during an extended visit to Japan on which she explored her cultural roots. Whether larger than a person or small enough to hold in one’s palm, her wheel-thrown or hand-shaped works from the 1960s on are rounded, richly decorated, hollow objects resembling ordinary pots but not intended to hold anything. Takaezu’s elongated or spherical works almost completely enclose an empty space that is inaccessible to the gaze and, like a soul in a body, makes them unique. Even when installed in groups, as in her series Trees (c. 1970) or Stars (1999), each preserves its own totemic identity. Their surfaces evoke the smooth volcanic contours of her homeland, with nebulous marks and drips of colour created by multiple different glazes. Her series of bizarre celestial bodies titled Moons (c. 1980–2000) are spheres of stoneware with a small hole at the base: blue and gold, pearl and ochre, dull and lustrous, the touches of colour on these works conjure up cosmological images. In the installation Gaea (Earth Mother) (1990), where they are cradled in hammocks strung between trees, Takaezu’s sculptures suggest the fertility of nature or of a womb.
Stefano Mudu
