Emily Irvin ( they/them/she/hers )

My work is a tremor of experience – an involuntary and rhythmic release of memory that reverberates from its initial happening. Happenings are sudden and strong and felt by many. Remnants of these experiences are found amongst memories of those who know its magnitude. This memory is often passed on, as tremors are inherited, creating a generational lineage of individuals and communities. I ask ceramic questions, observing my body in relation to the world in which it can touch to uncover different and new perspectives of histories, archives, memory, intimacy, gesture, and duration. Changing my orientation to objects through clay taps into its liberatory potential as a material that centers touch to archive and communicate experience. My work manifests through iterative and performative material investigations by indexing fingers and tongues – movements and language. I press my thumb into a clay slab until my fingerprint wears away to convey its way of knowing, which is passed on to future generations through the act of firing to make a fossil of the past. The stains of my mattress are maps of closeness archived through the seeping of bodies that impact the color of my work. My memories are written as I see them with clay and waxed to seal their credibility as a glaze. The application of ceramic questions allows for waxed toilet paper to become ceramic tiles. These processes are oscillating functions of one another as a tremor holds them together.

Irvin asks ceramic questions, observing their body in relation to the world it can touch through performative material explorations. These observations of the ceramic artist body in action and in dialogue with clay material drive Irvin’s research on the liberatory potential of clay. They received an MFA from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2021. They are currently pursuing a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of California Davis.