Kintsugi People

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with a lacquer dusted with precious metals, such as gold or silver. Rather than hiding the joins, Kintsugi highlights them and makes the pottery more valuable by virtue of the fact it has been broken. As a practice, Kintsugi teaches us that repair is part of our history.

In this exhibition, you see portraits of people who have visible scar tissue from either accidents or surgery. That scar tissue has been overlaid in gold leaf. The Kintsugi People project was devised by Dr Carol Holliday, psychotherapist, and lecturer at the University of Cambridge (now retired) and produced in collaboration with photographer Ryan Davies and the Arts team at Cambridge University Hospitals. Through her 30 years of clinical practice, Carol found that people often used metaphors of brokenness, fragmentation, splits or cracks to express distress or describe traumatic events. Finding a poetic relationship between this language and the art of repair, Carol was inspired to create the Kintsugi People project as a positive representation of how we can heal and learn to embrace our own histories, both inside and out.

The people photographed here volunteered to take part in the Kintsugi People project through an open call. Each volunteer worked with Carol and Ryan to create the pose which represents them. Carol then gilded with gold leaf the photographic print to create these beautiful portraits. Participants’ own words accompany their images.

We are proud to present this exhibition and hope it will spark interest and discussion. It’s important to acknowledge that everyone copes with illness and adversity differently, and not all wounds are visible. If you’re struggling, know that support is available. Please speak to your clinicians or GP, or call NHS on 111 for guidance and assistance.