Black Teeth reminds me of my grandmas. Like the practice of staining and dying teeth black to highlight and maintain the dental health and beauty of women and men who have come of age, I have used a black lacquer technique to mend a small collection of chipped and reclaimed antique Southeast Asian and East Asian ceramics.

The Japanese practice of Kintsugi 金継ぎ is highly problematic when enacted on artefacts without appreciation for the complex histories of imperialism and struggle across Asia. Now regularly appropriated, Kintsugi can be misused by practitioners who deliberately break objects just to ‘elevate’ them with a golden or silver mend. Instead, it is important for ceramic objects displaced and taken from places like China, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan and Korea (previously colonised by Japan) to seek another way to reclaim and mend our cultural objects. Avoiding the erasure or complete masking of breaks without having to blindly defer to new fetishisations and unexamined cultural appropriation.