came to life during marlou’s first encounter with clay, developed over a three-month residency at the european ceramic work center (ekwc). the goal was to explore the complicated relationship between femininity, identity, and clay, three things that tend to collapse under pressure but look great while doing it. she experimented in combining embodiment and function with extreme tactility and developed three ceramic self-portraits that explore material manipulation within everyday objects, transforming familiar feminine forms into something strange and alive.



marlou also likes it when things go wrong. so when she (accidentally) pushed a human into a supersized clay extruder for fun and ended up with a big pile of shiny limbs, she was quite satisfied. this happy accident became curly girl, an impossible-to-move ceramic sculpture that was originally meant to be a planter. curly girl lets viewers explore the relationship between body, object, and space, and has become a reflection of the house of rubber mindset, prioritizing fun over formality and absurdity over logic.



surrounded by endless images of the so-called “perfect woman,” she felt both fascinated and mildly irritated, which usually leads to interesting things. not long after the not so nice nail-polished pinky finger trophy emerged. this 16 kilogram vessel is a sculptural eye roll at beauty advice nobody asked for. she is intentionally twisted, perfectly imperfect, and just the right amount of absurd.  

as we have mentioned before, house of rubber likes to make things that probably shouldn’t be things, such as this dressy dressoir, a completely impractical 300 kilogram ceramic wardrobe, fun to look at but not so fun to transport (unless you have a forklift). though its twisted limbs evoke some (social) discomfort, its vibrant colors and loopy structures reflect the studio’s playful approach. within this piece, marlou intuitively experimented with house of rubber’s self-made liquid shooting machine, a pneumatic device normally used to create wobbly, tactile and quirky objects in rubber, and apparently now also clay. 

the boudoir is a series of ceramics from a room where objects seem to have personalities and are surprisingly good at emotional support. they first moved into the ekwc collection, then made themselves comfortable at dutch design week, stopped by kunstrai with sato gallery, and eventually flew all the way to new york for collectible.