Tamara Kuselman

Trauma is physical in a sense that ‘the body keeps the score’ – but how about the materialisation of traumatic experience? Tamara Kuselman previously made dance performances for small audiences based on people’s accounts of trauma. Now she is researching the role that specifically created objects might play in relating and mitigating such accounts. Starting from six individual stories, Kuselman made corresponding sets of ceramic objects to symbolise and embody them. Shape, surface and glazes all come together to convey personal records of transgression, anxiety, anger and loss. The relatively simple forms are made to be handled during performance as a point of reference, a focus of attention or perhaps just a presence. At the same time, the works can be seen as the first entries in a library of trauma that Kuselman has set out to fill with these highly charged simulacra.