Animal Rites: Reimagining our relationship with the animal world through contemporary ceramics

A group ceramics exhibition in Syros explores the enduring relationship between humans and animals through contemporary artistic practice, ritual, memory, and ecological reflection.

From prehistoric figurines to ritual vessels and folk pottery, animals have long occupied a central place in the history of ceramics. They have appeared as symbols, deities, companions, prey, and mythical beings, reflecting the evolving relationship between humans and the natural world. The exhibition Animal Rites revisits this enduring connection through the work of contemporary ceramic artists, exploring how animal forms continue to shape artistic imagination and cultural thought.

The exhibition’s title plays on the dual meaning of rites and rights. While it references the rituals, customs, and symbolic practices that historically linked humans and animals, it also points toward contemporary conversations about the rights and status of non-human beings. This dialogue between past and present lies at the heart of the exhibition.

In the ancient world, zoomorphic ceramic objects often served ceremonial functions, appearing in religious worship, offerings, symposia, and funerary practices. Animals acted as intermediaries between the human realm and forces considered sacred or transcendent. Today, amid ecological uncertainty and a growing reassessment of humanity’s place within the natural environment, similar questions re-emerge with renewed urgency: How do we coexist with other species? How do we imagine, represent, and relate to them?

Rather than reproducing historical forms, the artists participating in Animal Rites approach the animal as a living territory of inquiry. Animals appear as memories, symbols, bodies, or imagined presences. Their ceramic forms move fluidly between the familiar and the uncanny, the archaic and the contemporary, the crafted object and the living being.

Ceramics, one of humanity’s oldest artistic mediums, becomes here a vehicle for reconsidering a relationship that predates civilization itself. Through these works, animals cease to be mere subjects of representation and emerge instead as participants in a wider conversation about coexistence, responsibility, and shared futures. Animal Rites ultimately invites visitors not only to reflect on the rituals of the past but also to imagine new ways of living alongside the more-than-human world today.