JG speech

nancyma.com

Ms Jay Guy, Subject Chair (Ceramics), Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney

This exhibition ‘Women Who Speak’ has come together from three series of work that Nancy Ma has developed over the last four years. The last series is a work in progress and what you see before you tonight is 20 of 26 handmade ceramic objects that have emerged from Nancy’s artistic journey to date. Each work is as if a page in an unfinished book. The history of ceramics is the history of the world and while it belongs to all of us, its origins in modernity are still synonymous with Chinese culture – hence its common name, China. Its movement along the trade routes from East to West has created a window to some understanding of different cultures and the identities of individuals within those cultures. The state of globalisation today has both allowed and made it an imperative that more individual voices are heard and their concerns acknowledged and accounted for in the ways present and future societies are structured. In a world built on economic rationalism, it is sometimes easy to forget how important the role of the artist is to disseminating ideas that are valuable to all our futures.

The work of Nancy Ma makes us remember how important this role is.

Nancy’s work deals specifically with the straddling of two cultures both on a personal and collective level. Through its materiality of clay and its repeated form of traditional Chinese dress, this work addresses those things that are enduring or resistant to change – they are often of a collective nature, we are born into them. However, these are coupled with the changes both cultural and personal that are brought about through the passing of time and the individual’s and societal lived experience. This is how each work is inscribed, evoking and retelling an aspect of daily life. While Nancy Ma does not consider herself a feminist (and who can blame her given the negative press the subject has received in the past few years), the work of Women Who Speak that is before you is both a critique of cultural repressions and the ongoing personal struggle for equality in contemporary life. It highlights the homogenizing effects of global capitalism, the necessity of maintaining, celebrating and rebelling against tradition and the sometimes conflicting and contradictory nature of the roles we all must play. Please join me in congratulating Nancy on a beautiful and thought provoking exhibition.