Black Hole

Futamura Yoshimi uses a blend of stoneware and porcelain to create collapsed sculptural forms with a rugged, almost volcanic appearance. Begun on a potter’s wheel as a cylindrical form, works like Black Hole are then covered with white porcelain slip. This slip dries, then—as the artist continues to expand, tear, and perforate the object’s shape—it cracks. Futamura trained at the Seto School of Ceramics, a center associated with the lineage of one of Japan’s Six Old Kilns. She has lived and worked in Paris since 1986, a choice she made in part to avoid the gender biases in Japan that might have restricted her career.