Massa confusa

Massa Confusa is a combinatorial codex cataloguing João Maria Gusmão’s recent photographical findings, featuring an accompanying text by the artist and faithful reproductions of such oeuvres. The objects of Massa Confusa’s attention are Gusmão’s personal inventory of traditional Japanese-inspired Chawan tea bowls by the ceramicist Victor Harris. For over half a millennium, such vessels have been integral to the Japanese tea ceremony, serving both as a tool for presenting aromatic beverages, and as a metonym for the ritual’s moral geometry as a meditative worship of the imperfect. As such, each copy of Massa Confusa is, for all intents and purposes, unique! In the spirit of reckless invention, the artist and the designer Ana Baliza have devised a semi-random system of signatures, where queer queries were folded in both directions and assembled in stochastic combinations.