Artistic approach
Michaella is interested in the impact of artifacts on the creator and viewer, the question of time, the relativity of identities and connections through borrowed memories. And with hindsight, she realised that the latter interest stemmed from her research on the biographical construction of individuals in political conflicts during her sociology BA at the University of Strasbourg. Individual and collective memories are intimately linked, as are memory and identity. Build a representative image of oneself in a world filled with preconceived ideas, as well as an elaborate collective memory, is a challenge we have shared with our ancestors for millennia. We are obsessed with defining individuals through impressions and relative generalisation.
History is oriented towards universal statements culminating in orthodox views of individuals through the trend of event records and the recovery and analysis of cultural material (archaeology). But do we seize (and how) aspects of a person's life while holding an object they owned or deciphering a memory scratched on the surface?
Michaella participated in four anagama firings with the Anagama Kiln Project at the University of Oxford, including one with British potter Harriet Colleridge, which brought experimentation with deposits of ash layers on porcelain containers, to recreate the aesthetics of marine corrosion on the surface of the pots. She is now working to reproduce these effects in barrel firings.
In September 2019, she was commissioned to build a permanent pitfire site by Dr Robin Wilson, Director of the Wytham Studio (Visual Arts Research) at the University of Oxford. The site is designed for use by Oxford archaeology and ethnography students, as well as local artists and artists in residence. Michaella led the first firing, where the team obtained a rich palette of blues, purples and reds without the use of oxides, but only with organic matter.
Production work
In December 2016, she founded Mimie Poterie, an independent ceramics studio originally located in the historic city of Woodstock (UK). In late December 2020, Michaella relocated in a small mountainous hamlet in the heart of the Plateau des Millevaches, a natural park in Corrèze (France). Aside her art pieces which form her major body of work, she also creates functional items under the name Mimie Poterie. These are produced in small series, combining contemporary design with traditional techniques. She uses a variety of clays (earthenware, porcelain or stoneware), and either handbuilds or finely throws pieces, ensuring the lightness of the objects produced without compromising their durability. Each piece is unique, carefully manufactured, embracing variations of materials used in production. Great attention is paid to the ergonomics and aesthetics of each utilitarian object, designed to guarantee a renewed and pleasant feeling with each use.
Her art collections are mainly inspired by ancient ceramic expressions (mainly neolithic periods), with the incorporation of the natural world as she experiences it. Michaella is also currently working on a body of work looking at the impact of tech appropriation of language (e.g. cloud, data lake, quantum magic) on our imaginary and rapport to the natural world.
