Brie Ruais works primarily with clay to create sculptures that are emblematic of her physical relationship with the earth. For her wall-mounted, abstract ceramic pieces, Ruais employs her own physical features and bodily force as artistic tools. She often works within set parameters, such as using a volume of clay equal to her body weight or only using her own body, to manipulate the clay. Her movement-based practice is legible through the scrapes, gouges, and gestures embedded in the forms of the human-scale components. 

Falling Apart, Holding Together was created through the artist’s signature gesture “spreading out from center” that involves physically pushing the clay from the center outward, making marks with her hands that resemble natural variations in sand or soil. Ruais includes ceramic fragments from other kiln-fired works, rocks collected in the American Southwest, and rubble found on the streets of Brooklyn. The resulting form resembles an exploding star, its elements united through the vibrant glazes and centrifugal energy of the carefully arranged composition.  

According to Ruais, “This work was made in the fall of 2021, when the pandemic was raging in New York City. The title references ‘The Second Coming’ by William Butler Yeats, a poem the author Joan Didion used to describe the atomization of society in America during the late 1960s. This piece reflects on the idea that things do fall apart, and in so doing there is the possibility of transformation, of these parts finding balance amongst each other, in a kind of controlled chaos.”  

About the artist: Brie Ruais (b. 1982, Southern California) received a BFA from New York University’s Steinhardt’s School in 2004, and an MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts in 2011. Her work has been shown in various exhibitions, notably at Hayward Gallery, London; Musée d’art de Joliette, Québec, Canada; the Southern Utah Museum of Art, Cedar City; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Anderson Collection, Stanford, CA; and the Dallas Museum of Art, TX. In the summer of 2021, the Moody Center for the Arts presented Brie Ruais: Movement at the Edge of the Land, her first institutional solo exhibition. Ruais was the first-place recipient of the Virginia A. Groot Foundation Grant (2021) and has received numerous awards and residencies including the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant (2018), the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program (2018), the Dieu Donne Fellowship (2016), and the Shandaken Project Residency (2014). She lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.