Claudia Clare

About Claudia Clare

Claudia Clare is a potter, writer and feminist activist. She makes clay pots to tell stories. Feminism shapes her decisions about which stories to tell and how to research them. It also brings a sense of intimacy and a respect for the everyday to the stories she works with and to the political issues they illuminate.

Wedding Feast [1999]
Ceramic, 5 pieces
Donated by the artist 2001.

Clouds are gathering over Novi Sad. Over 200 guests are assembled to celebrate the wedding of Rachel to Igballe, her Albanian lover. They drink the toast with tea, the local champagne rejected: "that's what the Cetniks drank when they raped the Bosnian women". Their yellow garlands glow golden in the fading purple light, the coming darkness made dense with cloud. When the deluge does come, they dance the whole night long, and the memory of that soaking, green-tea night lives on in the memories of the 200.

One year on, in Prishtina, a 78-year-old Muslim woman, born in Sarajevo, raised in purdah, bearer of 9 kids, wearer of Turkish pants, is stitching a quilt to mark the first anniversary of her daughter Igballe's union with Rachel, the English woman.

3 years on, the bombs are raining now, the garlands long gone and Prishtina, where they settled, is rattling with gun fire.

2 minutes to leave, summarise your life in 2 minutes.

The sullen boredom of the refugee camp is broken with the shrill cry of a mobile phone. Igballe and her entire family have survived. Rachel, in Budapest, boards the train for the long journey to Macedonia, and reunion. Return to Prishtina brings new horrors, grief for friends now dead, but the quilt survives.

Wedding Feast, made in the peaceful Yorkshire Spring of 1999, while waiting for news, is a toast to all their futures.