A rounded, slumping form evoking a swaddled or shrouded body dominates Self
Care, its surface folded and creased as though under its own weight, a single
limb-like protrusion curling back against itself. The glaze runs from warm ochre into
passages of blue-green, pooling and breaking unpredictably in the kiln, a process
Woody De Othello has described as one he only partly controls. Set on a low
ceramic stand rather than a conventional pedestal, the piece is presented at the scale
and register of furniture, a recurring device in his work that collapses the distance
between sculpture and domestic object. De Othello made the sculpture in 2017, the
year he completed his MFA at California College of the Arts. Born in Miami to
Haitian immigrant parents, he had by then worked in clay for nearly a decade. His
institutional standing has risen meteorically: in 2019 he was selected for the
Meridians sector at Art Basel Miami Beach; most recently, his work was the subject
of a solo exhibition at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. The sculpture's title points to
the psychological and emotional undercurrents De Othello has said he channels into
inanimate forms, without dictating how a viewer should read them.