Cow (come closer) – Graduation work at Gerrit Rietveld Academie 2021

The modern dairy cow lives as a domesticated body, extended by the machines and technologies of the farm. It’s world consists of concrete floors and metal tubes, screwed and welded together into ever repeating modular structures.

Following that same logic, Cow (come closer) consists of hundreds of black-firing ceramic pieces that can be assembled using a standardised system of nuts and bolts.

The decorative patterns, themselves formed by pressing the nuts, stud-bolts and wrench into the wet clay, remind of a more ancient approach to building and farming. The horns set the boundary. In the ancient Minoan civilization (Crete, 3500 BC – 1100 BC) the horns of the bull were a central symbol, a focal point recurring throughout their art and architecture. The strength of the animal, the danger it posed to its keepers, was not contained but embraced.

On commercial Western cattlefarms, the horns are burned off the head of the calf before they can grow. The animal must be standardized and optimized, made to fit the box it lives in to the same extend as the box is made to be able to contain the animal.