Ain

Previously, "Retelling: I m sleepy. I'll think some more n tell u tomorrow" was seen by the people here. The ceramics hold the fragile oral stories of my family even though there is no certainty about them and could perhaps be untrue. Nevertheless, as small and untrue oral stories may be, they are our sole inheritance from our families. This was an alternative that I wanted to take to the lack of documentation and archive of oral stories specifically my family's oral stories. Coming from a post-colonial country, it’s undeniable that we lack archives and documentation due to the long history of colonisation. As Cesaire says, it’s almost as if ‘everything before colonisation is prehistory. And history only begins with colonisation’. Even to this day, post-colonial countries still face hardships trying to retrieve back their artefacts. Thus, these ceramics exists for me to embrace and attempt to remember the intergenerational oral memory of my family that constantly transforms with every recital and takes a step closer to silently being forgotten.

People have reached out to me, wanting to own these fragile ceramics and put them in their houses. Something about the ceramics oddly attracts them. Encouraging their desires to own one. Sometimes, as the maker of the ceramics and rememberer of the stories that each ceramic holds, I wonder if the people were ‘listening’ to the ceramics or were they simply looking at them? What gaze did the ceramics receive? Nevertheless, I promised myself that these ceramics will only exist once and never more.

However, “ciplak” of the ceramics has appeared. “Ciplak” (Malay) is often used to refer to imitated goods. You can now own it for a price. And there are no worries if it ever runs out; for it is cheap and can always be produced. The initial work that refers to the fragility of intergenerational memory from oral stories has been imitated. It has become a common commodity that anyone can own for a price. Do these “ciplaks” still hold the same stories as the authentic ceramics? Are they desirable to the people similar to the authentic ones? Or are they no longer ‘attractive’?
Well anyway, do you want to have one?