×

Apply

Apply

© Daniel Clauson

« Back to Winners

Daniel Clauson

Seattle, WA

Artist Statement

These ceramic forms are reflective of the Abject Body - the traumatized body - the Queer body. They act as monuments of resistance towards the limitations of biopolitical structures in order to create spaces of acceptance. Utilizing amorphous qualities, these artworks relinquish figurative notions of the academically rendered, colonially enforced, and socially/politically elected ideas of Body. Challenging social political binary ideals and histories of the heteronormative Body to evaluate how we simultaneously hold identity, trauma, and desire.

The movement of these forms evoke touch and intimacy while also possessing sections of fragmentation, loss, and rough textural erosion. An essence of distorted familiarity exists through the physically opened and hollowed forms. A repeating visual language flows through the work created by the layering of clay slabs that fold together torsos and extremities. Ambiguous beginnings and endings dissolve and appear through the thickly applied glazed and mixed media surfaces. The textured surface reveals landscapes reminiscent of those within my childhood in the Pacific Northwest. Using memories of caves carved from the oceans salt water and the rough terrain of the Cascade mountains, these ceramic forms reveal effects of continual wear that is similarly received by erosions within the landscape and traumas upon the human Body.

Clay in its greenware state holds, imprints, and reflects the effects forced upon it. Once fired, that impressionable material takes into permanence those moments of tactility, violence, and immediacy. Through this transmutation of ephemerality into permanence, these ceramic forms become rendered as Monuments; elevating these notions of identity, body, and landscape to a place of remembrance.

These artworks are created to resist, question, and unbind the self from the biopolitical body. Therefore I mediate with clay to find my amorphous body to validate the experiences of transformation into my own queer identity. These artworks hold the state of acceptance and rejection of what this body - these bodies - have been subjected to. Through this voice, validation, and vulnerability my practice aims to acknowledge the complexities of Queerness, with its lovingness and trauma bringing forth a space that is sensitive and healing.

© Daniel Clauson

Daniel Clauson's Portfolio

© Daniel Clauson

Artist Biography

Daniel is a Queer and Trans Artist focusing mostly in ceramics. Through ceramics he creates bodily forms that resist the limitations of biological and systematic structure, and reach towards an empathetic, critical, and political Figurative form. Dan utilizes his past experiences of gender dysphoria, relationships, and ‘home’ to influence his work. Connecting contradicting ideas of love and pain, trauma and acceptance, intimacy and ambiguity. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest, where the coastal and mountainous erosion qualities have influenced the textures and surfacing techniques in his work.

From the University of Washington, Daniel received a Bachelors in Art with Honors in the 3D4M department, as well as a minor in Art History. Daniel has attended both the University of Colorado (Boulder) and the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) as a Post Baccalaureate in ceramics, and is a Resident artist for Fall 2022 at Anderson Ranch Arts Center.

danielclauson.com

@daniel.clauson

© Daniel Clauson

Stay Connected

Follow Us on Instagram
@hopperprize

Join Our Network