Cleansing Objects

Cleansing Objects is a design series that operates on a deliberate grammatical and conceptual ambiguity: the objects are simultaneously meant for cleansing and subject to being cleansed.

Concept

Using soap as the sole material, the work takes the form of crosses, menorahs, and Buddhist prayer beads—objects historically associated with sacredness, ritual order, and spiritual permanence.

This material choice introduces a structural paradox. Forms that traditionally signify transcendence and durability are assigned a function that guarantees their gradual disappearance through use. In this sense, the objects oscillate between tool and object, between sacred form and consumable material, without stabilizing in either position.

The project is situated within the context of the spectacle society articulated by Guy Debord, in which sacred symbols are continuously absorbed into systems of media representation and consumption. Rather than resisting this process, Cleansing Objects pushes it to its logical conclusion: when sacred forms are fully instrumentalized—priced, handled, and exhausted through everyday use—their meaning is no longer guaranteed by belief, but tested through practice.

Here, cleansing functions as a contemporary ritual. Each act of use constitutes a choice: to preserve the symbolic form associated with spiritual purity, or to allow its dissolution in exchange for physical cleanliness. As the objects erode through contact with ordinary dirt, and as their forms ultimately collapse, the work asks whether purification produces transcendence, or whether it results in the complete evacuation of meaning.