A single ecstasy: Material intimacy in Miquel Barceló’s ceramics in the Cathedral of Palma de Majorca

An analysis of Miquel Barceló’s ceramic intervention in the Chapel of Saint Peter (renamed Chapel of the Holy Sacrament after the intervention), inside the Cathedral of Palma de Majorca (Spain), engenders a discussion about the relationship between the artist and his material. This analysis uses a Taoist lens to give a novel reading of the artwork, the artist’s practice, and of contemporary western notions about art, architectural space, materiality and the body. On the basis that, in Taoism, human organisms and ‘nature’ are understood to be a single integral unity, this conception is hereby extended to include matter, thus presenting a vigorous physical engagement with materiality as an ‘artful erotic contact’ between the human organism and a material.