Embodying Confucian ideals of simplicity and purity, they will journey with her to South Korea, carrying little treasures on a soft tide, back to their native shore.

The artist’s 10-day residency in Seochon, Seoul, will culminate in a solo exhibition. Entitled “Small Ceremonies”, the presentation will bring together unique pieces in response to the serene contemplation of the space and the sensibility of the surrounding landscape.

Among feasts for the eye, visitors will encounter the melody of a trickling fountain, the offering of refreshments, and the scent of burning incense.

This new form of immersive and multi-sensorial idiom reminds us of devotional bodies found in temples and sacred spaces, with their unfaltering fulfilment of the natural world.

Sculptural objects and their making become the site of emotions transcending all linguistic and cultural boundaries. Free of any functionality or purpose, they evoke daily rituals of the past to enrich the present.

Ceremonies and ancestral rites carry meanings and energies in contemporary Korean Society. They bestow more worth in the act of transmitting an object than the value of the object itself.

Crafting adornments stretches back to the beginning of time and may even pre-date the advent of language.

This impulse to carve, mould, bend, chisel, weld, smooth, gouge, suspend, and balance, the most diverse materials into new contours and masses, is one of the most universal and enduring forms of expression.

Emma Witter’s found and made objects bear the traces and experiences of their former functions. Her

quiet sculptures reach out beyond words.

Fragments of metal alloys, wine corks and organic matters are the vehicles of memories that once shaped real lives. They summon what will be embellished, forgotten, remembered, and ultimately passed on.

This entanglement of sensual explorations with materials and the prelude to their existence, distils an intimate sense of place. They magnify the act of sculpting as a tool of non-verbal communication.

According to the book of Genesis, the Universe was created in seven days. It was not made from the visible but formed with words. Speech preceded physical things.

It will take ten days for Emma Witter to re-imagine a beguiling world. Her visual poetry, infused with the rhythm of nature and life’s precious details, spans the boundaries of physical substances and tactile memories, of Western and Eastern cultures, of decorative and fine art. For now and again, how to tell a story matters more than the story itself.'

Text courtesy of Sophie Lachowsky for A Piece A Peace.