Marcela Paz Undurraga

Ceramicist

©Ulysse Lacoste

Timeless figures

Marcela has a close relationship with clay
Her forms are linked to femininity
Her pieces seek to be elemental and timeless

Marcela Paz Undurraga decided to pursue ceramics after taking her Visual Arts final exam with mountain clay. "I quickly recognised that it was an apt materiality for my ideas and the way I conceive the time of creation," she says. "Little by little I began to observe, read, and hear about ceramics and each time I felt with more and more conviction that I belonged to its language." Marcela believes that it is a primitive craft, "where you do not need many external elements to carry it out. In that sense, the simplicity of resources and the mystery of the transformation of the material make ceramics a friendly and profound craft." Marcela enjoys the direct contact with the material and the passage of time necessary for the evolution of that material. Since August 2020 she lives in Semur-en-Auxois in France. In September 2022 she opened a place of work and exhibition called ContreForme.

Interview

©Ulysse Lacoste

What is your relationship with Lulo ceramics?: Lulo have allowed me to explore the world of curves with a lot of freedom and along with that the growth/evolution of the form. It is a technique that reflects the passage of time very well.
What role do shapes play in your work?: I am inspired by universal and elemental forms, such as the sphere, the cone, the pyramid, the cube, and their multiple possibilities of relationship and synthesis. I question and reflect on how the history of human life develops along with the history of objects. It is through a free composition that I build new elemental and timeless bodies.
How do you feel about the curve as a form?: The curve is a constant in my work because it seems that it does not escape, that it travels forever to return, and that it refers to unity. In turn, the circle as a historical and universal symbol is transcendental to space and time.
How do you express tradition and innovation in your work?: I work with material and with millenary techniques, those that were discovered and used by the first civilisations. I am not sure my work is about innovation, but my work has to do with the gesture of going back to the primitive and to enduring, in a society dominated by speed and the disposable. It is an innovation with the keys and values of the times that preceded us.

Marcela Paz Undurraga is an expert artisan: she began her career in 2013