The Ornamented Knife confronts the Pure, Unadorned Moon

Yeo Workshop

About Artwork

One of several fountains in the current exhibition, this work features a moon jar pierced through with a blade dubbed an eunjangdo. It was inspired, Phua notes, by the South Korean film, Homme Fatale (2019). The moon jar is a traditional Korean vessel, typically cast from white porcelain and asymmetrical in its top and bottom halves, that appeared during the Joseon dynasty. The moniker, a twentieth-century coinage, comes from its hue and shape. The moon jar became popular in Korea for its supposed embodiment of neo-Confucian values; its pristine appearance symbolized purity, and its unadorned surfaces, a sense of restraint. The eunjangdo is a silver knife carried or worn by women as an emblem of chastity (for maidens) and fidelity (for married women), and used in the service of self-defence or even suicide, if necessary. The meeting of the two objects in a violent encounter – one a signifier of morality, the other a weapon of self-sacrifice – suggests the turning of the pre-modern ideal of female virtue, which privileged death over the loss of chastity, on itself. The puncturing of the jar may be understood as an act of aggression against neo-Confucian strictures, a feminist reaction to historical power asymmetries.

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Artist Profile

SHAYNE PHUA (b. 1997, Singapore) uses the medium of clay to narrate stories and turn a critical eye on everyday realities. Her ceramic objects employ history, myth and literature to reflect on the world around her. She graduated with BA(Hons) in Communication Design from The Glasgow School of Art, Singapore.

Phua enjoys observing the forms and functions of utilitarian objects. Her work focuses on these aspects of ceramics as the vehicle for exploring a host of discourses, including oral traditions, folklore, historical anecdote and socio-political ideologies. In a world increasingly flattened out by social media and cultural homogenisation, her practice is premised on a keen interest in the local and often overlooked – a register of things and tales that flicker beneath public attention. As the artist notes, “That which I see or hear, or both, often coalesce into a surreal vision. I unpack its relation to daily life, alter and make sense of it by forging an allegory of my own. In a sense, I am bringing past and present into conversation, into play.”

In 2019, Shayne was an Artist in Residence at Zentrum fur Keramik in Berlin and Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Denmark. In 2020, she had her debut solo, ‘Sehnsucht’ which acknowledges the existence of complex and indefinite emotions and the longing for nostalgia in our current age of rapid change. In 2022, she showed in ‘Blended tongue’ in Paris, featuring works of Singapore and France Artists with botanical installations by This Humid House. Most recently, she exhibited her works in a group show, ‘New Makers’ in Bangkok featuring Thai and Singaporean Artists.

>> More works: https://www.yeoworkshop.com/artists/41-shayne-phua/works/

Artist:

Shayne Phua

Medium:

Ceramic with fountain pump and pipe, tassels, and silver gilding

Size:

22 x 27.5 x 15 cm

Year:

2024