Massin, Marie - Exuvie #1

Stoneware, wheel-thrown then deformed and hand-built. Cone 6. 
11cm x 13cm x 12cm.

Marie's work revolves around the inner nature of objects and the tension that arises between their outer shell and what they contain. The pieces are no longer conceived as receptacles—closed forms that can hold something—but as volumes capable of harboring a latent presence.

The container, now stripped of its original function, loses its own existence and is freed from its role as a supporting structure. This interior space becomes a site of transformation, where, at times, an anthropomorphic form seems to emerge, exerting pressure on the boundaries of its container until it forces it open.

This structure, like a skeleton or a carcass, undertakes a movement
of extraction. It sheds its “flesh”; much like molting, the shell persists as a trace of a previous state, while what it contained attains a new autonomy. The void materializes, takes on human form, and acts as an active space into which the notions of memory, transformation, and survival are projected. Ultimately, I attach as much importance to what lies within as to what lies without, and place these interdependent notions of presence and absence on equal footing, while questioning the capacity of forms to bear the traces of what once inhabited them.