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In the sculptural installation Rhea (2025), Liza Houben visualizes the passing of time and the transitory nature of material things. Arising from a Corten steel basin filled with clay slip, is a ceramic sculpture of a woman carrying a sleeping baby. The fired clay sculpture is covered in a layer of wet clay. A pump pushes clay slip up from the basin to drip down over the sculpture, causing the layer of wet clay to slowly erode, thereby gradually revealing more and more of the ceramic sculpture underneath.
As a sculptor, clay has always been Houben’s medium of choice. Over the past few years she has mainly been making hybrid installations with performative elements, experimenting with new materials. With Rhea, she returns to clay sculpture as the focal point. She is showing us the working process and the artistry; how you can sculpt a figure from wet clay and water, how it then hardens and sets in its definite shape. At the same time the spectator is witness to a process of decomposition, with the clay slowly peeling off.
Houben regards time as a force that affects everything we cherish. As a mother of a young child you may, for instance, experience the passing of time as relentless. As much as you would want to keep your child close to you forever, there will come a time when they become too big to carry. The clay in the installation symbolizes both the freezing and passing of time. The mother sculpture represents the vulnerability as well as the transitory nature of the things we want to hold on to.
Text: Sarah van Binsbergen
Translated from Dutch by Marie Louise Schoondergang (The Art of Translation)