2025
Breaking to Mend
Love, is like porcelain, is delicate and intricate, crafted with care, adorned with meaning, and vulnerable to cracks under pressure. Yet, from these cracks, new stories emerge. In Breaking to Mend, Ciane Xavier explores the fragility and resilience of relationships through a layered installation that invites viewers to confront the cycles of connection, rupture, and repair.
The installation centers around two sculptures: a girl offering her heart to a boy. These figures embody vulnerability and emotional courage. The gesture of giving one’s heart is universal, at once tender and monumental. The purity of the sculptures contrasts with the surrounding chaos, drawing attention to the precarious balance of trust and reciprocity that defines human connection.
Surrounding the sculptures, ceramic plates adorn the gallery walls. Each plate is painted with underglaze and glazes, some harmonious, others chaotic. These plates symbolise the complexity of relationships, reflecting moments of joy, tension, and intimacy.
Scattered across the gallery floor lie broken plates. These shards represent the moments of fracture that inevitably occur in relationships. Yet their placement within the installation suggests they are not discarded but integral to the narrative. They invite viewers to reflect on the beauty and meaning found in imperfection.
The juxtaposition of whole and broken plates emphasizes that relationships, like porcelain, require care and attention. They can be fragile, yet their fragments hold potential for transformation and renewal. By navigating the terrain of broken shards, viewers metaphorically engage with the process of mending.
“Love is not perfect, and neither are we. The plates are more than objects; they’re symbols of the moments we cherish and the moments we fear.”
Relationships are like porcelain: they’re beautiful, intricate, and fragile. Yet, even when they break, their fragments hold stories.