We think of our bodies as independent closed objects, and have boundaries separating “me” from “not me”. But biology tells a much stranger, more poetic story.
Through a phenomenon known as fetal-maternal microchimerism, boundaries dissolve. During pregnancy, stem cells pass back and forth across the placenta. A mother carries living cells of her child within her organs, heart and mind for decades, while child retains the cellular echoes of mother. So, we are literally like walking and breathing archives of each other.
In my ceramic practice, I explore transformation (metamorphosis) as the central theme of the “Theatre of matter”. Microchimerism is metamorphosis on a cellular scale. It means identity could be shared. A body undergoes a silent, permanent mutation, accepting foreign cells that beat, breath and remember alongside us. We are all like porous vessels carrying ghosts of our origins or even future, shaped by the cells we share. We are never truly alone in our own skin.
I translated this biological story into clay. It’s too hauntingly dramatic and poetic not to be shared.