MOKI LAST, the perfection of the imperfection

Moki Last’s objects breathe simplicity and purity. Her tranquil, unembellished forms immediately arouse sympathy. The shapes and colours are mild and timeless; the volumes always have a human scale. Pretention and dogmatism are entirely absent. Her shapes are never angular and rational. Although Last produces work in large series, there is never any sign of standardisation. Her objects possess a visual fluidity and organic quality and clearly bear traces of the human hand. Last’s references to nature, to marks left by man, the passing of time and mortality are also the aesthetic fundaments of the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi. Principles that are at odds with certain Western schools of thought such as Modernism with its closed cube as metaphor, industrially manufactured glossy, streamlined, cool and light-coloured functional materials. Objects created in accord with the Wabi-Sabi principle are based on the shape of the open-faced bowl. As such, they are receptive to the outside world, and consist of natural materials like earth, clay, wood, stone. Rather than bright colours, the tones are muted and earthy. The object’s inner nature, meaning and colour evolve with the passage of time, through processes of erosion and the emergence of imperfections and cracks. They carry the imprint of the passing years, the passing seasons, the cycle of life. The objects made according to this principle are smaller in scale, in harmony with their environment and primarily intended for the private domain. They put the contemporary into perspective and are not constructed on the basis of rational modules, but are hand-made and unique. Timeless in appearance, they become ever-more eloquent with every passing year. Moki Last seems to work according to these principles intuitively. While it may appear accessible and self-evident, her work always holds a deeper meaning. It is almost as though she wants to reassure the viewer by offering work of a timeless, refined, subtle and restrained beauty. Her open vase shapes remind us of prehistoric forms that, capable of containing food and water, were instrumental in securing man’s survival. She creates her objects using the most fundamental of methods: constructing shapes from coils of clay. By stacking coil upon coil, Moki Last creates rhythmical visual elements that give the objects an organic character, yet always leaving a trace of the human hand. Sometimes the coils are almost identical in size; at other times a visual counterpoint emerges, as larger shapes combine with smaller ones, or alternate with openings and voids both intentional and incidental. According to Last, the more slender coils might also be human gestures and the larger, connecting coils a kind of intermingling. This visual language began to emerge between 1996 and 1998 in the series Zijn gebaren zijn de wereldprocessen (His Gestures are the Processes of the World). Last symbolises the processes that inevitably shape the world, whilst also hinting at a reality beyond the immediately visible. Reverence for the grander scheme of things, for the mysteries of life and nature, for the all-encompassing that defies description and which other cultures feel and respect more profoundly. In works such as those in the series Body & Soul (2011), Last gathers the still-soft shape and presses it to her body, imbuing all her serial pieces with an individual, quirky tug or twist. Everything is the direct result of the mood of the moment. In the case of her larger sculptures, it takes the form of an embrace and at times an almost one-to-one physical combat between the body of the artist and the immutable mass of the material that refuses

to yield and succumb to deformation. Sculptures unable to stand up to such confrontations simply expire – literally. In fact, many of Last’s works are literally Body & Soul. The most intense manifestation of this physical way of working can be seen in the series Met Voeten Getreden (Trodden Underfoot) (2010). Sparked by frustration at injustice, the artist kicks and stamps upon painstakingly constructed black objects. They remain, it seems, tacit witnesses to a battle won. In Last’s ever-changing installations, vase-shaped vessels are presented horizontally, as well as vertically, an approach particularly evident in the 2004 series Daar waar het landschap vervaagt zwemt de grijzeWalvis (There Where the Landscape Fades Swims the Grey Whale). With this piece, Last intends to express the feeling evoked by the word ‘whale’. Silence, rarity and a mild, gentle distance in a grey ocean. The melancholy poetic title seems to be at odds with Last’s spontaneous, impulsive way of working. Moki Last always works in coherent series, which only reveal themselves to be part of a greater whole later on. In fact, they gradually merge and evolve into series of new shapes and colours. A more restrained series is Brieven naar Huis (Letters Home), produced between 2005 and 2007. Despite their more introvert nature, the smaller works attempt to enter into a dialogue through their handwriting and illegible script. In these Letters Home, the hand of Fatima (the Hamsa), an amulet offering protection against the evil eye, which appears in henna tattoos, wall decorations and jewellery from India to the Middle East, is a recurrent visual element. The hand also stands for power, strength and blessing. Here, Last’s theme is the connection between East and West whereby the porcelain and the colour of the glaze are reminiscent of Japanese and Chinese images. The Hamsa represents the Middle East; Last’s encoded handwriting embodies the Western aspect. The hand of Fatima also appears in the first works from the series Keien langs het Pad van het Leven (Rocks Along the Path of Life) (2008-2009). These rocks are way-markers for travellers. During the journey, the hand’s grip slowly slackens. The rocks sometimes have soft shapes, perhaps foreshadowing the series Trodden Underfoot. Here, the power of the imperfect is made visible, in the same way as it occurs in the natural world. An important element of Last’s installations is the composition and placement of objects. Only then do the ideas fall, literally, into place, and the meaning clearly emerges, as does the force of the sum of the parts. The subtle structure, colour and differences in shape of each individual object play a vital part in their positioning. And, beginning with the series Het water en de vulkaan (The Water and the Volcano) (2000) and Nepal (2002) the series itself becomes crucial. In Hidden Messages (2012 - 2014), her power is fully manifest in a series of a hundred tall vase-shaped objects and the messages for the future they contain. The skin is always a keenly seductive element. It clearly reveals traces of the creation process: thumb prints that are sometimes on the inside or outside of the object. The reversal of inside-outside is most in evidence in Last’s 2000 installation Het Water en de Vulkaan (The Water and The Volcano). The most impressive presentation of this installation to date was undoubtedly in 2005, when the work was installed at the window of Museum Mesdag, The Hague, during a major exhibition of one hundred works by Moki Last. One half of the volcano was positioned on the inside, mirroring the other half that was placed on the garden side. It is a piece exploring life and death and the unruly forces of nature, against which human ingenuity is powerless. The flow of lava kills and destroys anything in its path, but its fecundity bears the seeds of new life for the future. The water is symbolised by the various light and dark blue hues of the glaze.

None of the stone-like hues are ever the same; nor are the shapes and the texture of the skin. Glaze is applied meagrely. Some objects appear to have no glaze whatsoever – the colour of the bare clay peeks through. But all is not as it seems. Last’s use of colour and glaze is always harmonious. Apart from thumb prints, traces of writing – almost obliterated – can still be seen. But letters are indecipherable. They are the artist’s signature and at once a kind of journal and human element. The works cry out to be touched. Lasts follows a similar approach in her large pieces with Japanese rice paper. The series Shabono consists of lightly curved portal-like shapes of blue-coloured lengths of rice paper that simply hang loosely so that here, too, the material comes into its own. The title refers to the symbolic separation into group huts of an Amazon Indian tribe. You can’t see each other but you hear everything and pretend to hear nothing out of respect for your fellows. The Shabonos also look like noren, short bolts of Japanese cloth that serve as a symbolic curtain. You can see another person approach, but their face is hidden from sight. The eastern-looking calligraphic Last drew onto the paper amplifies the Asian connotation that suffuses much of her work. In her rice paper books such as Het huis waarin ik woon (The House I Live In) (2006 - 2008), the theme of the home as nucleus reappears. Moki Last’s latest and most ambitious project is Hidden Messages, a restrained installation of a hundred large black and white vase-like or vessel shapes. They act as containers for content of a non-material nature: a thought that is handed on. Here, clay and rice paper unite. The entire project is a Memento Mori – a reminder of man’s mortality. Ni conversus fueris et sicut puer factus... (If you do not turn back and become like a child...). Last has no intention of allowing the piece to be a traditional, rather chilling, vanitas; rather, it is a call for a reconciliation with life that is worth living, and holds meaning for now – in all its brevity – and the time to come. We are all mortal and struggle to know what legacy we leave for the future, when we are no longer here. The artist will invite a hundred people to place their message, wish, thought, poem, or document for our successors, in the hundred containers. The actual message remains hidden; it is palpable, but can only be read by breaking the vessel. A message to the future. Because there always is a future. The clay tablets of writings by the Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians, fired by happenstance, endured for many centuries. Without a doubt, those clay tablets also inspired Last’s series Letters Home. The ancient tablets are among mankind’s earliest surviving writings. They seem everlasting, but are fragile and vulnerable and would surely have perished, were it not for the cautious guardianship of museum curators. And man, whose days are numbered from the very first breath, is part of the dynamic circle of life. It is a thought that brings peace and solace. And is echoed in Moki Last’s most recent project: Hidden Messages. “Nature never does anything without a purpose. She is beneficent. I praise her and all her works. She is wise and still. She is crafty, but for a good end; she brought me here and will lead me away again.” (Goethe) Paul Donker Duyvis 2012