Mpa

Underglaze and acrylic paint on porcelain

Height: 48.90″ (175 cm)

Unique

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Amanda Offor’s monumental porcelain vessels explore grief, memory, loss and the preservation of familial histories. Working between London and Jingdezhen, Offor uses the ceramic vessel as a vehicle through which personal memory and cultural histories can be reconstructed and preserved.

These works draw on the influence of Hunping funerary soul urns from the Han Dynasty, while incorporating visual motifs associated with the blue-and-white wares of the Dutch East India Company. Offor deliberately brings these different cultural references together on a form whose identity has historically existed as a vessel for death and remembrance. In doing so, the urns become contemporary memorial objects—created to immortalise the essence of family members and loved ones while offering beauty as a way of approaching death.

In Mpa (Grandpa), this relationship between vessel, ancestry and remembrance becomes explicitly personal. Here, Offor transforms the funerary vessel into an intimate meditation on love, ancestry, remembrance and what remains after loss.