º NEW

30 future sculptures, 3 missing drawings

Design by Thea Kleinhempel, pics by Federica Mambrini. Special edition of 60 numbered copies, self-published.
Printed in Leipzig on November, 2022.

Available on request.

º ONGOING

Via Spaventa (with Federico Clavarino)

For two years Federico and I walked down the same street several times a day to get to our studio. It was the fastest route, but not the prettiest. The section of it that we traversed had been turned into a dump, where people from the area left their broken furniture, clothes and garbage to accumulate until the wind and those passing by reshuffled it. The walls of the street were full of colorful graffiti. The sun hit the concrete so hard that on hot days it was a true torture to walk past there, without any trees to give some shade.

Its name, translated in English, would be something along the lines of The Scary Road. We made it a goal to find a way to enjoy our daily walks on that street. I built my own porcelain palaces resembling those on the street and glazed them with the same colors and shapes of the graffiti on the wall. I also used the images that Federico took there, with its people, its light and its forms, to construct my pieces. The result of this work, Via Spaventa, brings together his images and my sculptures.

This project is part of a larger research we started in 2022 called The Crab’s House, in which we explore our migrations and the ways we have of inhabiting the space as we look into alternative models of dwelling.

1. Bezoar

A Bezoar is a stone made of remnants, parts that did not follow the normal route within a system. In most cases, it stays unnoticed in the tract or stomach of its host. When bezoars were first extracted from animals or humans, our predecessors were confronted with a dilemma: how to approach this unusual, threatening and at the same time, extraordinary thing.

Bezoars were then attributed magical properties, particularly those of counteracting poison, and soon came to be known as precious antidotes. That which could have caused death was now that which could prevent it.

The most common type of bezoar is the Phytobezoar, which is made up of indigestible materials (such as plants, fibers, peels). When these elements are processed in the stomach, and fail to be integrated in the digestive and nutritional chains, they change and become stone-like formations that stay inside the body. This alteration indirectly transforms them from biofacts into some type of artifacts.

In this project I explore this connection through bezoars made from reclaimed clays and glazes that are then fired several times, actively altering the different elements they are made of. The kiln, much like the stomach, has a central role in enabling these “mutations”. The end product of these transformations is then placed on a pedestal similar to those upon which the rarest organic bezoars -valuable objects of desire- now stand on in museums around the world.

Grated Square (Flat series) Paperclay, 20x20x5cm, 2021

2. Are people flowers?

Motivated by George Ohr and Betty Woodman’s work in ceramics, and particularly vases, in this collaboration we focused on exploring these containers that, due to their ornamental and functional nature, are usually dismissed as works that stand outside the art world, when they are instead carriers of culture and meaning. To further dive into this connection between an object often overlooked in its power to transmit history - vases have been passed down through entire family trees, while others stand in museums telling us about the daily practices of long gone civilizations- I began working with painter Caterina Gabelli who was in charge of decorating with glazes the vases I made, in a dialogue between the arts and crafts.

3. Wounds

Wound 4, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 2, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 4, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 5, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 5, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wounds, porcelain, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 2, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 3, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 7, porcelain, 24x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 6, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wound 2, porcelain, 22x17x4, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Wounds, porcelain, 2020 / ph. Nicola Novello

Porcelain is a material with memory. This means that no matter how many changes it undergoes, the initial transformations or interventions it is subjected to keep coming back, are indelible. With this thought in mind, the series Wounds is centred on the past as the lingering narrative around which those after are built. By cutting open the spaces where a crack showed up on each of these Wounds once they were dry, the margins between the outside and the inside of the piece are blurred and the options where to look at the object from are expanded. The hollowness of each piece is also exposed this way. The outer layer of this “totems of memory” becomes the skin that covers what is hidden from our eyes and the incisions - or wounds - made on the surface allows us to see the space within.

4. Eel Soup

Cosset, stoneware 30x10x6, 2018 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Egg, stoneware, 12x26x20, 2018 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Coral, special porcelain, 10x8x9, 2019 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Fold, stoneware, 16x24x24, 2018 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Twine, special porcelain, 30x5x4, 2019 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Torso, special porcelain, 25x13x12, 2019 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Melt, special porcelain, 16x12x12, 2019 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Wiggle, 25x10x10, special porcelain, 2019 / ph. Tommaso Tanini

Imagine an eel soup: a wriggling mass of creatures whose ends and beginnings can be swapped in the human eye, trapped in a limited space, their bodies entangled below the surface or floating on top of it, half submerged in the liquid that now holds them. Like the visible bits of the viscous animals you have just pictured, the objects I present here are fragments of an ephemeral reality. In a collaboration with photographer Federico Clavarino, by carefully observing spaces and body parts as they twist, press, open, close, bend and touch, photography and ceramic have become our means to reinterpret a series of meaningful connections. The resulting series of reconfigurations ultimately tells a story of coexistence, one that is largely built around the lingering images left behind by otherwise vanishing intersections.

Black Twine, stoneware, 30x10x10cm, 2021 / ph. Mattia Greghi

5. Shows

Bezoar + Wounds @ Miart with Viasaterna + Federico Clavarino, September 2021

Wounds @ Artissima, November 2020

Commission of sculptures for Ghost Stories by Federico Clavarino @ Contretype, December 2020

Eel Soup @ Viasaterna, December 2019

Eel Soup @ Fotofestiwal, 2018

6. Bio

Tami Izko (Cochabamba, 1984)

Tami is a Spanish-Bolivian ceramist and sculptor. Her work has been exhibited internationally and her most recent projects focus on connections between memory, trauma and resilience (Wounds, 2020) and on the mechanisms behind magical thinking and binary systems (Bezoar, 2021-ongoing). In addition to her individual research, in 2018 she started an ongoing collaboration with photographer Federico Clavarino in which sculpture and photography are used from different angles to explore issues such as intimacy, coexistence and belonging. Some of these joint projects include Eel Soup (2017), Via Spaventa (2021) and The Crab’s House (2022-ongoing).

Exhibitions

Solo

2022, Via Spaventa, Espace Brockmann and Fondation Bruckner, Gevena

2019, Eel Soup, Viasaterna Gallery, Milan (double solo show with Federico Clavarino)

2018, Eel Soup, Pinguin, Bruxelles (double solo show with Federico Clavarino)

Group

November 2022, The Harvest, Stiftung Künstlerdorf, Schöppingen

December 2020, Gradi di Vuoto, Viasaterna Gallery, Milan

October 2020, Artissima Unplugged with Viasaterna Gallery, Turin

September 2019, Auto Fiction, Dyson Gallery, Royal College of Art, London

September 2019, Kiraathane at Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul

2019, Grand Prix, Fotofestiwal Lódz

Workshops & Teaching

Studio Orlando, Milan, 2019-2022

Visiting Lecturer, University of Roehampton, London, 2019

Member, Turning Earth, London 2018-2019

Ceramic design, glazing and firing, Caulino Atelier, Lisbon, 2017-2019

Residencies / Fellowships

Stiftung Künstlerdorf artist in residence / August - November 2022, Schöppingen

Boghossian Foundation artist in residence / February - April 2023, Brussels

Art Futures Fellowship
May-June 2023, Athens

Publications

Eel Soup, with Federico Clavarino.
Published by Witty Books in June, 2022.

30 future sculptures, 3 missing drawings. Self-Published in Leipzig, 2022.

TAMI IZKO

TAMI IZKO 1.Bezoar 2.APF 3.Wounds 4.Eel Soup 5.Shows 6.Bio

1.Bezoar 2.APF 3.Wounds 4.Eel Soup 5.Shows 6.Bio

© 2021 TAMI IZKO Email Instagram Webdesign by Gluqbar Studio

TAMI IZKO

1.Bezoar
2.APF
3.Wounds
4.Eel Soup
5.Shows
6.Bio