180cm x 35cm x 45cm

ceramics, plastic tube, metal & copperwire

KATRI PAUNU, 2020

190cm x 200cm x 200cm

raw porcelain, ceramics, metal, plastic tube, water humidifiers, water, yeast and sugar, copperwire

Katri Paunu, 2020

’The Portal’ references to multiple meanings varying from bodily functions such as the veins in human body, to an architectural structure like a gate, or a passage. Portal can be viewed also in fictional means as a magical or technological doorway to another location, period in time or dimension. Portals are also used in internet as an entrance to other websites.

The ambiguity of this term is fruitful to gather varying associations composed as a habitat likened to a treshold. This site combines ceramics as hollow ’host’ bodies leaking of water, yeast and sugar; elements that can be seen as fundaments continuously flowing, inhabiting, devouring and feeding various different lifeforms.

Yeasts can be seen as one of the most mundane and smallest examples of a living material in its simplest form. They are single-celled fungi and humans have been using them for over thousands of years in ceramic vessels to produce wine and beer. Hence the Portal explores ceramics combined with contemporary industrial yeast in varying states from liquid to vapor, in a search to unfold a fragmented narrative.

Katri Paunu, 2020