Every night, when the day is gone, I make one matchstick from porcelain. I fire raw porcelain in the kiln, assign the dates, and keep those turned-to-stone matchsticks in dated matchboxes.

The fundamental venture of this collection is to translate real time into a physical dimension in a form of spatial archiving, to grasp and measure the intangible passage of time in an absolute tangible presence.

We see colors, hear sounds and feel textures. Perceiving time is not associated with any one particular sense. We do not see, hear, or touch time passing, only emotional perception lingers. Time lays in the ultimate public realm and is the only substance that is universal for all alive. Every day is what we all share, where our personal events and experiences happen and, sometimes, intersect.

It is my daily ritual and commitment to represent the irreversibility and passage of time in material matter, signaled in the every day I live. Each day is closer to the last, and almost everything - fears, failures, expectations - falls away in the perspective of finitude, leaving only what is important.

PS

I have been making porcelain matchsticks since July 2018 and continue to make one every single day. 

There are more than 2800 porcelain matchsticks in this archive of passage of time.

This artwork has been exhibited in the Royal Academy of Arts’s Summer Exhibition in 2020 and is included into the Royal College of Art’s alumni artwork collection.

Price per one matchstick is £350 (any date) plus one condition. 

If you would like to purchase a porcelain matchstick, please contact xenia.busalova.studio@outlook.com.