Keana Gauvin

Shroom Teapot

While the identities of drug-user and tea-drinker may seem to be contradictory, they are capable of being in dialect with one another. Through the landscape of a tea set and hand embroidered table cloth I attempted to highlight the complex relationship one can have with that which they consume and subvert ideas of shame and stigma surrounding substance use. I thought it would be a cheeky paradox to make a porcelain teapot (porcelain being a material usually regarded as posh) with intentions to use it as a vessel for brewing and serving magic mushroom tea. Tea consumption played a key role in developing notions of respectability and gentility. Meanwhile, magic mushrooms are associated with deviant behavior, and upon consumption completely shatter these ideas of respectability and gentility- flipping reality on its head. Exploring the realm between fantasy and reality (indicative of how substances can blur these two distinctions), I hope the viewer can get lost in the colorful and tedious details of the tea set and be brought momentarily into a surreal world, away from the duties of daily life.

“Meticulous and fantastical ornate works seek to subvert ideas that 'pleasure seeking' is synonymous with shame. By repurposing vintage domestic materials associated with stereotypes of femininity, embellished with stigmatized substances I critique societies contradicting ideas of 'good' and 'deviant' behaviors in a playful cheeky rendition. ”