Koutroulou Magoula
Over the course of his first year in college, Jiaju Ma received one of Brown University's Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards, which granted him funding to create a sculpture series based on his research and personal experience in participating in the excavation of Koutroulou Magoula, a Neolithic tell site located in central Greece. Jiaju worked alongside co-director Yannis Hamilakis and other students in the field for four weeks, discovered numerous Neolithic objects, and gained considerable knowledge about Greek Neolithic prehistory and basic archaeological methodology.
Among the objects recovered were enigmatic clay figurines which are usually no taller than 2.0 inches tall and possess a mixture of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic traits. Their meaning remains mysterious.
Jiaju Ma’s sculpture series does not aim to decode these figurines. Rather, it is an embodiment of his artistic interpretations of the figurines, his humble understanding of archaeology, and his intimate experience of fieldwork. All the figurines were found in broken pieces in the field, never complete. All of their former colorful appearances had faded, leaving only traces. Ma extrapolated their looks from the parts recovered, and imagined their decorations from other pottery fragments and objects. He employed modern technology of 3D modelling and printing to create a conversation between the past and present, and he designed a connection mechanism so that the figures can be assembled, dissembled, and reassembled. The nonexistence of Jiuju Ma’s sculpture's definite forms alludes to the figurines' inexplicable meaning; the process of constant reassembly respects archaeologists' assiduous and meticulous efforts of reconstructing the past from fragments.
For more information about Jiaju Ma’s work, follow this link:
Jiaju Ma’s figure series is featured in Costas Papadopoulos, Yannis Hamilakis, Nina Kyparissi-Apostolika and Marta Díaz-Guardamino’s recent article in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal:
Papadopoulos, C., Hamilakis, Y., Kyparissi-Apostolika, N. and Díaz-Guardamino, M. 2019. Digital sensoriality: the Neolithic Figurines from Koutroulou Magoula, Greece. Cambridge Archaeological Journal (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeological-journal/article/digital-sensoriality-the-neolithic-figurines-from-koutroulou-magoula-greece/6195468DD12023DB1CDE61733E8EED68)
