The complexity of living through war is hard to over exaggerate. Even for a privileged person like me who hasn't lost her loved ones, house or job, the massiveness of people's suffering is almost paralyzing. And of course the unpredictability.
A kind of diary, created by the author after returning to de-occupied Irpin. To cope with stress and resume work in the studio, she decided to sculpt one teacup every day. Living one more day during the war, she created a ceramic bowl to symbolically place all the emotions of that day in it. There were harder and easier days, but the daily ritual became a point of support and structured time. Each bowl, or chawan, is molded from a different mixture of clays, has a different texture, and is numbered and dated. Every piece is different, numbered and dated.
The name of the project resonates with the so-called "Korean" bowls (kōraimono) - goblets for the tea ceremony, which were imported from Korea and highly valued in Japan in the 15th and 16th centuries. Initially, these were simple bowls that Korean peasants used every day for any dishes: soup, rice, rice wine. Koreans called these bowls "maksabal" - a bowl for everything.
The resulting 20+ chawans have been fired in a collective anagama firing event and are currently on an exposition in the Ukraine-Japan Cultural Center.
