Elyse Pignolet: You Should Calm Down [Hardcover]

This is the first monograph exploring the work of Elyse Pignolet. It includes essays by Jenni Sorkin and Caroline Ellen Liou, plus an interview with Pignolet by Shana Nys Dambrot. 

144 pages
Hardcover
2025
Published by MOAH, Lancaster in conjunction with the exhibition Elyse Pignolet: Hysterical. 
ISBN: 979-8-9925944-1-6

Born in Oakland, CA, Pignolet is an American with Filipino heritage, living and working in Los Angeles. She attended California State University, San Francisco, studying Fine Arts. In 2001 she lived in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain, studying arts and Spanish language. She completed her BFA degree in ceramics at CSU Long Beach in 2007. Her studies included an intensive ceramics tour through Mainland China, and she also attended the International Ceramics Biennale in Korea. She was awarded a CSU Long Beach Travel Scholarship for Art, and traveled to Lisbon, Portugal to study traditional tile murals. Pignolet was awarded a fellowship to Ballinglen Arts Center, Ireland. She has traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and South America.

Pignolet works primarily in ceramics and her work has been inspired by and dealt with various themes including political and social issues, the dialectic between feminism and misogyny, inequality, and cultural stereotypes. Exploring the boundaries between ceramics, painting and sculpture, Pignolet attempts to place the permanence and traditions of ceramics with the fleeting and transitory nature of the contemporary world.

Imbued with traditional porcelain decoration from around the globe, the vessels in Pignolet’s newest ceramic series contain familiar patterns and motifs but upon closer inspection, we see that the traditional floral patterns are composed with images and text
containing politically confrontational, unapologetic messaging; ubiquitous flower patterns have been reimagined to reveal suggestive innuendos and tropes that are all too common in our language and culture, as well as, unsettling and demeaning comments on women, sexual assault and the everyday experience of street harassment.