[Re-]Creative rites: exploring the materiality of clay and its making processes

ABSTRACT Since earliest known histories, the materiality of clay together with its processes of transformation to ceramics has presented itself as a metaphor for the human self. In this article, I use process philosophy to interrogate the intersection between ceramics practice and the processes of becoming and transitioning. Through my own studio explorations of ceramics, I analyse the material quality of clay and demonstrate how distinct themes that can be inferredfrom its making processes parallel those of rites of passage. In doing so, I argue that as a reflective practice, the ceramic process lends itself to transformations and transitioning common to rites of passage. Acknowledging my positionality as a black female of Igbo descent, I critique the Phalli Series, a set of thirteen clay phallus objects that I created and exhibited, to problematise and reflect on select circumcision and Baptismal rites of passage in (South) Africa.