Predestination and Free Will

For this project my inspiration comes from two very important conceptions in Christianity, which are predestination and free will. The concept of predestination suggests that every man has been predestined to be either saved or to be condemned to hell, based on Ephesians 2:8. Free will on the other hand suggests that man has the ability to choose his own fate. These two concepts have been considered contradictory to each other by many Christian scholars over the history of Christianity. However, I believe that both of them co-exist because we can find evidence for both throughout the Holy Bible. For example, Joseph and Moses were predestined by God to save the Israelites from the catastrophes of their times, but on the other hand Eve used her free will and chose to eat from a tree that God forbade her to.

My ceramic vessels investigate the same relationship between predestination and free will. In each composition, all the unit vessels are predestined to be part of a bigger sculpture. At the same time each vessel is fully functional on its own and has its own unique identity. The very process of creating these vessels correlates with the concepts of predestination and free will as well. A potter can do all the things necessary to get a particular result but after a certain point, he can no longer control the outcome.