Memory as Clay explores untreated clay as a dynamic, archival medium that records traces of contact, climate, and scent across time. Clay is approached not as a neutral substrate but as a material already saturated with personal and cultural memory. Coming from a context where clay historically functioned as a primary building material, the medium carries embedded associations of home, shelter, and inherited making practices. By foregrounding unfired clay’s capacity to act, deform, crack, exude, and decay according to its own material logics, the project refuses clay’s conventional treatment as a static aesthetic object and instead positions it as an active agent of inscription. This opens a micro‑scale inquiry into what it means for matter to bear and transmit memory in the age of the Anthropocene.

Methodologically, the project combines experimental material practice and contextual research, synthesising hands-on engagement with clay and reflection on media theory. Air-dry clay is pressed onto surfaces that carry personal associations of “home” in the UK and Saudi Arabia. These impressions are then infused with site-specific scents drawn from everyday rituals and domestic environments – frankincense associated with the neighbourhood mosque; oud tied to maternal memory; and eucalyptus linked to care and healing during illness. The clay is left to dry and transform, with attention directed to its own temporalities: cracking, warping, fading scent, dusting, and other slow events that exceed human control, treating these as inscriptions of a more-than-human archive.