Instrumental music throughout the Renaissance was closely associated with vocal music. Only at the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and at a few other chapels with choirs of competent singers, was polyphonic church music consistently sung unaccompanied. Elsewhere the organ, lute, viols, or other instruments accompanied, doubled, or substituted for voices, and organists developed a huge repertory of music for use in church services, including preludes, interludes, and arrangements of liturgical melodies. In secular music, the lute remained popular both for solos and in ensembles; clavier instruments were coming into wider use, and hundreds of pieces were written for chamber music ensembles.
Manga Ormolu enters the dialogue on contemporary culture, technology, and globalization through a fabricated relationship between ceramic tradition (using the form of Chinese Ming dynasty vessels) and techno-Pop Art. The futuristic update of the Ming vessels in this series recalls 18th century French gilded ormolu, where historic Chinese vessels were transformed into curiosity pieces for aristocrats. But here, robotic prosthetics inspired by anime (Japanese animation) and manga (the beloved comics and picture novels of Japan) subvert elitism with the accessibility of popular culture.
Working with Asian cultural elements highlights the evolving Western experience of the “Orient.” This narrative is personal: the hybridization of cultures mirrors my identity as an ethnically-mixed Asian Canadian. My family history is one of successive generations shedding the markers of ethnic identity in order to succeed in an adopted country – within a few generations this cultural filtration has spanned China, India, Trinidad, Ireland and Canada.
While Manga Ormolu offers multiple points of entry into sociocultural dialogue, manga, by nature, doesn’t take itself too seriously. The futuristic ornamentation can be excessive, self-aggrandizing, even ridiculous. This is a fitting reflection of our human need to envision and translate fantastic ideas into reality; in fact, striving for transcendence is a unifying feature of human cultural history. This characteristic is reflected in the unassuming, yet utterly transformable material of clay. Manga Ormolu, through content, form and material, vividly demonstrates the conflicting and complementary forces that shape our perceptions of Ourselves and the Other.
"Father of the tenor sax." Was Coleman Hawkins.
