Olivia Fero is a ceramicist-theorist whose practice combines making, writing, and curating. Drawing on Gilbert Ryle's concept of the category mistake, her work identifies the persistent binaries of ceramic discourse- vessel and sculpture, craft and art, function and meaning- as symptoms of the dualistic thinking that separates mind from body, culture from nature, the West from the rest. Through Karen Barad's theory of intra-action, she argues that clay operates as witness rather than passive medium, demonstrating how material practice can challenge these hierarchies while opening space for multiple ontologies to coexist. Her work, influenced by YBA provocations and new materialist theory, uses clay to think through false binaries that limit both ceramic discourse and broader cultural narratives.

So:

My practice-led research (from biting clay to manipulating glaze chemistry) demonstrates how material knowledge challenges textual authority.

I create exhibition frameworks that allow ceramic objects to exist in multiple registers simultaneously - ritual AND commodity, vessel AND sculpture, tradition AND rupture - without forcing them into Western evolutionary narratives.

I work with artists, ceramic artists and object makers to articulate how their work operates as material philosophy.

I create work that makes ceramics uncomfortable, pushing the medium beyond its comfort zones while respecting its unique materiality.

I can translate between Jingdezhen's millennium of wisdom, Barad's theory of intra-action, Ryle's materialist philosophy, and contemporary art theory, helping institutions understand why ceramics matters NOW, not as heritage craft but as critical contemporary practice.