Ena Boskovic: Lo Que Saben Mis Manos

Ena Boskovic lives in Tulum, between the sea and the jungle. She calls nature her biggest teacher.

In her first solo exhibition at Sofia Sominski Gallery, every vessel in this body of work is built by coiling, one of the oldest ways of making pottery. Each vessel develops by hand, layer upon layer, through a slow and intensely physical process. Boskovic stitches the coils together, on some pieces with her fingertips alone, on others with a small wooden tool. Where the seams stay visible, you can see how the vessel was built. The marks overlap in rows, round on some pieces and long and narrow on others. They look like things found in nature, such as leaves, bark or scales.

The vessel is one of the oldest forms in ceramics. It was important for survival, and its use still connects us to our ancestors today.

Most of Boskovic’s sculptures remain unglazed. She brushes on many coats of black or white terra sigillata, which means “sealed earth” and is a very fine clay slip. Applied this thickly, it cracks into tiny lines as it dries and again in the kiln. Boskovic deliberately leaves the cracks. A few pieces have deep fissures at the rim or wall, and those stay as they are too.

By leaving these fissures visible, the artist moves the vessel away from its practical function and draws the viewer’s attention to its pure form. And when function stays outside, the vessel becomes a half-open space that can hold our own thoughts, dreams, fears and everything immaterial hidden within our bodies. It has an opening and an inside you can’t fully see, much like a body. Boskovic keeps to this old shape because it can hold what cannot be put into words, as well as what the body passes on to the vessel through the process.

The body has its own knowledge.

This process of making calls for precise shaping and, at the same time, letting go. The repetition quiets Boskovic’s thoughts: “I lose track of time and enter a state of flow. My hands respond to the clay as the clay responds to my hands. My thoughts become clouds passing by, something I can only watch. Now and then, there is only the blue sky between them.”

Working with clay means giving up some control. It is a collaboration with the four elements, and fire always has the last word: “I find that comforting: not every decision is mine to make. That makes me feel part of something larger, and at home within it.”

The finished piece shows the touch of the hands and the changes the fire has left behind.