Yak Dung II / ceramic
2024
yak dung powder, clay, yak dung ash glazes
Three-channel video installation, 4 min 7 sec



This project consists of two ceramic tableware collections designed for distinct contexts—one for the grasslands and the other for an urban setting—using the same materials: clay kneaded with yak dung powder and glazes made from yak dung ash. Rather than simply producing different forms for different audiences, the work tests how identical material processes operate under divergent conditions of use, perception, and cultural expectation. One set is embedded in everyday use, while the other functions as a perceptual probe, together demonstrating how meaning emerges through context rather than form.

On the Tibetan Plateau, burning yak dung for heat is part of a necessity-driven material cycle. Building on this practice, ash collected from herders’ stoves was transformed into an innovative glaze for traditional tsampa bowls. In this process, yak dung ash does not remain residue, but re-enters everyday life as part of the same cycle. The bowls regenerate a familiar object, showing how cultural meaning can reside in a mundane material through continuity rather than transformation alone.

In an urban context, the same material logic was tested through a curated dining experiment developed within Terroir Sketching, a transdisciplinary platform I co-founded with chef Will Xie. In one session, yak-dung-smoked yak tongue was served on yak dung ceramic tableware, bringing fuel, food, and vessel into direct material continuity. Rather than functioning as provocation, the meal operated as a perceptual probe, using sensory encounter to examine assumptions around cleanliness and contamination. Through cross-disciplinary collaboration and dialogue, the experiment invited participants to reconsider human–nonhuman coexistence on the grasslands as a material condition shaped through everyday practices.











Study


2024/06 
yak dung ash ceramic test tiles


2024/07 
yak dung ash ceramic tablewares


2024/08
yak hair fabric clay, yak dung paper clay