Sonia Jia: Porcelain Repair

It takes a moment for a viewer of Sonia Jia’s Porcelain Repair to distinguish what is before them. Shapes rise out of the monochrome canvas before sinking back into it. As one’s eyes adjust, a table’s diminishing lines appear, as does the pattern of its cloth. Placed on it are several porcelain items in various states of repair; some fractured, others reconstructed. One notices a chair, a slither of a window with foliage beyond, and the room begins to take shape, imbued with a foggy narrative (that is, the interrupted act of repairing porcelain). No sooner have these objects, this space, and this narrative appeared, before they disappear again into their beigey substrate.

Everything balances at the edge of being and non-being; each object is almost indeterminable from its surroundings, and everything exists in a state of precarious connection. This intimacy between beings is, in the artist’s opinion, perpetually fraught, strained by individualism, and on the verge of fracture. Indeed, the fragments of porcelain scattered over the table attest to delicacy of interpersonal congruence and intimacy. 

Yet continuity between the objects remains. The very title of the work affirms the reparability of fractures; and the forms, tones, and colours that Jia so carefully balances and unifies exist in harmony with one another. Conflict and trauma are, to the artist, necessary elements of intimacy; the repaired plates and bowls bare the scars of past afflictions, but nonetheless describe concord. Even the broken pieces of porcelain remain bound to one another tonally and colouristically, only awaiting their repair. 

Jia’s explorations of connectivity extend beyond the image to the work’s material. Paint is thinly applied to the canvas, so that the weave shows through under the wash. Subsequently, the image becomes one with its substrate, and intimacy between objects thus stretches outside of the fictitious space and beyond.

The allusion to personal experience, memory, and trauma is clear. The objects describe their history just as people do. Jia paints with colours that resemble some skin pigments, with occasional blooms of dark purple that evoke bruises, mirroring the damage evident on both the  destroyed and reconstructed porcelain. That we can transcend interpersonal boundaries and past trauma in search of harmony and affinity is the artist’s message. Porcelain Repair is a painting that exudes a faith in human connection and intimacy.