My master's thesis focuses on transience—on that which inevitably changes, decays, and disappears. I explore the human need to preserve memory and the emotions that arise when we are confronted with scenes of decay or death. In the theoretical part, I first outline how transience has been depicted in art throughout history, how artists have engaged with the concept of death and its symbols (decay, rot, degradation...), and then examine how these concepts manifest in public sculpture. I am interested in how public sculpture can serve as a vessel of memory and how we perceive it in relation to the space in which it is placed.
From there, the research moves toward auto-destructive art, forming a bridge between the theoretical and practical components of my master's thesis. In the practical part, through a series of experiments, I explore how an artwork itself can become a process of decay. I present three sets of sculptures, each deteriorating in its own way—yet they share a common foundation and visually resemble remnants, as if they were the remains of a decayed skeleton. The goal is not merely to depict transience but to use the process of disintegration to raise new questions: What remains when something disappears? How do we understand memory if there is no longer an object to carry it?
Clay is the primary medium I use for these sculptures, as it is inherently in constant flux—it dries, cracks, crumbles, and deteriorates. A sculpture that is simultaneously being created and vanishing thus becomes a monument to something that cannot truly be captured. It does not speak of one specific event or person but of all of us—of life that inevitably fades and of the traces we leave behind.
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