Ceramics

Each year, the ceramics studio Ceramiche Rometti and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation host a design competition and internship program. Selected students join the factory to learn both traditional and modern ceramic manufacturing techniques while creating new works for the studio and refining their competition entries. The 2014 prompt was to reinterpret Rometti's iconic "Venere" (Venus) vase, a tapered cylindrical form blending modernist geometry with stylized depictions of the female figure.

With Deconstructed Venus, I sought to preserve this blend of abstraction and sensuality while reimagining the goddess of love and sex through an intimate and modern lens. The design features square cutout “windows” that offer glimpses of a realistic female figure rendered in life-size proportions.

The narrowed lens of these squares evokes the fleeting and fragmented views one might encounter in close contact, a play on perspective that draws the viewer into a private, intimate gaze. Such glimpses suggest that these moments of closeness are the essence of the goddess herself, capturing her presence in fragments that feel both tangible and just out of reach.