Tears XL by Katya Reka

The interconnectedness of beings, plants and the environment, their resilience and fragility, finality and cyclical nature are the constant fascination and the driving force behind my work. Interested in the role and place of a physical book in the contemporary world, I explore how we interact with the book as a physical object. The book structure is a vehicle for a personal narrative to which handmade paper adds layers of universal meaning. TEARS consists of two book objects, Small and Extra Large. Pages were created using round paper mold and left outside under the rain to create “papermaker’s tears”—indentations in paper. The process of carefully making paper by hand and then ritually offering it to the weather to be transformed was liberating. Traditionally, these imperfections were undesired. Each page has unique texture created by the rain falling on the wet cotton pulp. The pages were then bound shut, not allowing the viewer to interact with pages.