Seçil Yaylalı

Unguentarium (Tear Catcher)

Ramallah 2010-Istanbul 2017

handmade glass bottles, wheat seeds, cotton, invisible wire

Tear catchers or tear bottles were used by many ancient societies to collect tears to show mourning. Pain has a huge range of consequences and tears are among the most explicit, although they can symbolize hope as well.

Unguentarium is a series of hand-made tear bottles that have been filled with seeds of wheat, the primary food of human beings. Seeds are both the final stage of fruit and the potential new life of a tree.

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As Tear catchers were started in the West Bank area of Palestine, this work aims to show how the pain was turned into hope in this land. The artist used the beautiful prehistoric tear catchers as a metaphor and wanted to put the sprouted wheat in them as a representation of the rebirth of life with the most crucial food of human beings.