Coarse clay is transformed into a miniature “Cavern Mountain,” its holes piercing through time as if through fossil. The shadow lifts it up, mud and bone indistinct—a miniature universe of primal desolation.

Bone and Mud – Cavern Mountain is a sculptural work from artist XIE Qun’s “Bone and Mud” series, whose form has evolved from poetry and red-clay improvisational sculpture to fixed ceramic creation. The piece uses highly shrinkable black zisha clay, with milky white clay slip filling natural depressions on the surface; it is left unglazed to preserve the earthy texture and making traces, resulting in a dry yet warm tactile quality. Xie Qun transforms human bone structure into a metaphysical mountain landscape—a miniature, desiccated, empty cave mountain resembling an excavated relic. During firing, gravity and shrinkage cause the clay to settle, and the work becomes stable at a particular angle; a brass niche serves as a semi-open frame, presenting it at the optimal viewing height and angle, with ripples below like water and a backplate like shadow. She particularly emphasizes the work’s inward “holes”—negative spaces as carriers of emptiness, echoing the insufficiently visible “negative form” dimension of female vitality, a direction her future work will continue to explore.