Be the Inside of the Vase, 2012. Documentation of performance; photograph and video by Jamie Baker. Echo Morgan (Xie Rong) Chinese, born 1983; lives and works in the UK and China. Jamie Baker, British, born 1972; lives and works in the UK and China. Photograph and video courtesy of the artist duo, L2024.8.1-2  

Born from fire, ceramics are made of clay, a soft sedimentary rock. Through a combination of art, technology, and cultural knowledge, ceramics continue to evolve. Attesting to the medium’s perseverance, contemporary artist Echo Morgan impactfully animates ceramics through the medium of performance. Through her series Be the Inside of the Vase, Morgan presents the entanglements of ceramics with relevant topics of identity, gender norms, and belonging.

Be the Inside of the Vase reflects on Morgan’s complex family relationships and their anthropomorphization of ceramics. Her mother would tell her, “Don’t be a vase, pretty but empty inside, be the inside, be the quality!” while her father would say, “Women should be like vase, smooth, decorative and empty inside!”

Beginning with this childhood memory, Morgan examines her family’s history and the wider implications of her racialized form as both object and person, available for public consumption. Morgan explores these entanglements by painting her body with blue and white paint in the motif of bamboo and cherry blossoms—a classic ceramic technique seen in this gallery’s more historical objects.

To better appreciate the vibrant stories of Morgan and other artists, this gallery forgoes the standard arrangement of ceramics by nationality or chronology, and instead groups them by color and theme.