Elia Pagliarino

Ceramic artist and painter Elia Pagliarino is, above all, a researcher as an ethnologist. Within her art practice she explores the facets of the human representation and the double play of the image.

Educated at ETPA, Toulouse, she has exhibited widely throughout France and recently exhibited a piece from her ‘Beacons’ ceramic series witnessing a collective memory, with the Society of Women Artists (SWA) at their annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries, London.

Her ‘Beacons’ series of ceramic vessels list individual or collective stories inscribed in the past of our civilizations or in the course of extinction. These little stories testify to the Great History and tend an invisible thread between countries and civilizations.

From Patagonia to Okinawa, from Manhattan to Pakistan, from Central Africa to Iceland, ... the story continues by regularly hatching new tags.

Speaking about her inspiration, Elia says:

“Initially I began my research into the series’ Specimens and Beacons in a very intuitive way. I then realised that they were closely linked: the Specimens series are presented in biologist glass cases, and draw upon a utopian hypothesis of a new species to come, as a revenge on those who have disappeared; while the “Beacons” ceramics store, little by little, stories which have come to an end.”

Speaking specifically about how her ceramics are created, Elia says “I work with a potter. I begin by making a model in plaster to elaborate the volume, the shape and the colour. A potter then makes the series and fires them for the first time. I then paint directly onto the pot, after which the potter fires for a second time. The choice of the terracotta is important for me.

It is a natural material, perhaps the most used in all the civilizations, which carefully protect many precious things. And for archaeologists, the earthenware items they discover help them to understand the history of a culture. It is also a way for me to keep inside all these true stories and immortalize them in and on the ceramic. I call these ceramics “Beacons” because they will be marked on a world map, each a light marking a place."

- Elia Pagliarino