ALENA KOST
Ceramic artist based in Switzerland.
I work with clay as a carrier of memory.
My practice engages with fracture, stitching, loss and the long work of repair.
Through objects and installations I explore uprooting, migration of identity,
the disappearance of home — and the quiet persistence of life after it.
Cocoon
Through Cocoon, I explore a fragile, temporary state of transition.
The work reflects vulnerability and transformation, shaped by the loss of familiar internal and external supports.
Cocoon. Memory
Sculptural installation about memory, loss and rebuilding home.
Dreams
Dreams is a ceramic series exploring loss, memory, and the fragile boundary between reality and sleep.
Through sculptural forms, I ask whether those we lose truly disappear — or simply enter another state of being.
Shards
Fragments of old ceramics collected on the beaches of Taganrog.
Discarded, reshaped by waves, sand and time.
Each shard carries a fragile trace of memory.
Recursion N1
An installation structured around two symbols — the circle and the tilde.
Together, they form a closed system in which solitude endlessly reproduces itself, beyond space and time.
Porcelain. Series.
IPorcelain cups created through slip casting.The works are grouped into series,
where differences emerge through surface, color, and hand finishing.
Studio Workshops.
Small group ceramic workshops focused on material, process and working with care.
A cocoon is my home, which I collect bit by bit in the hope of preserving what is left of it - memory.The year of the beginning of the Ukrainian war changed the lives of many people, including mine. Due to disagreement with the policy of my state, I left my country. Along with this, having lost not only my home, friends, workshop, I lost my identity.
In this work, I go deep inside myself to find it. To build new supports and a new life. This is my way of surviving loss.A cocoon is a protective shell that larvae surround themselves with when moving to a new stage of development.My cocoon is a transition to a new stage of my life, in which I also try to preserve my past experience, everything that is an integral part of myself and that is so easy to lose.In the process of work, I managed to send myself fragments of soil and clay in a parcel, which I carefully collected back home, in Taganrog. I didn't know then that one day I would have to leave.
I weave these fragments and materials into my cocoon in the hope of preserving the archeology of my memory.Cocoon 2025
Stoneware, soil fragments, thread.
In the body of work Dreams, initiated in 2021, I explore the nature of reality itself. This series of ceramic sculptures emerged from a deeply personal experience — the loss of a close person.I reflect on how, when the pain of loss becomes unbearable, we often repress it, shifting our emotions and переживания into the realm of dreams. This leads me to question: what if people do not truly leave, but instead sink into an eternal sleep? A world where the greatest secrets are kept and the deepest pain resides.The sleeping heads appear as portals — spaces where reality transforms, and what we call “the real” begins to feel like a mirage. During sleep, a person passes through different phases and states; knowledge inaccessible in waking life may reveal itself. Perhaps, in sleep, we live another life — one that is deeper, more intense.In this series, I use the spiral coil-building technique. Each new coil of clay represents another stage of descent into sleep.
The work is completed only after firing, which functions as a ritual of transition — a passage from our reality into a different world: the world of dreams.Dreams, 2021–2023
Ceramic sculptures, coil-built.
The series combines wood-fired works with ash glazes, salt-painted surfaces, and raw clay pieces.
Shards of old ceramics that I collected on the Taganrog beaches are broken dishes from different times, in which you can recognize a plate from your parents' house or a handle from your grandmother's cup.These shards have been tested by time: they were thrown into the trash, somehow this trash ended up on the beach, the waves of the bay beat this ceramics against the sand, walls and stones, some of it was carried away to the sea, and some was brought by the wave.Each shard can have its own story.These are shards of memory that slip away so quickly and I try to preserve everything that is somehow subject to destruction.Shards 2020
Hand-built ceramic objects.
Found shards, clay, porcelain and soil used as a surface layer.
The work is based on 2 symbols.
The circle is the perfection of form, the cyclicality of time, the cyclicality of space, and finally, infinity.
Tilde is a typographic sign with many meanings, which can work as a single symbol or in combination with other typographic signs.
Regardless of space and time, regardless of how far we have gone inside ourselves or outside, we are forever locked inside our loneliness.Recursion N1, 2019
Suspended ceramic construction. Stoneware, ash glazes.
Hand-built.
This work explores a state of transition — a temporary, unstable and fragile state of form.It is a state of vulnerability, overcoming and transformation — processes that take the ground away and dismantle familiar supports, both internal and external.Movement here is presented not as physical action, but as a change in internal structure under the influence of external circumstances and internal rethinking.Cocoon, 2025
Hand-built ceramic elements with visible stitching and an internal supporting structure.
Natural soil collected in Taganrog, Säntis, and Liechtensteig is applied to the surface as a material and conceptual layer.
GardenPorcelain, hand-painted, with gold.
The series explores the fragile balance between a utilitarian object and the poetic image of a garden — a space of quiet and inner presence.
CrushedPorcelain cups shaped through deliberate deformation.
The series explores pressure and form.Some pieces are fully glazed, while others are glazed on the inside and left bare on the outside.
All objects are unified by gold accents.
Some works from the porcelain cup series are available.
For details and inquiries, please contact me directly.
I offer small, carefully guided ceramic workshops in my studio in Lichtensteig.The workshops approach working with clay as an artistic process — focused on material, form, surface, and individual expression.They are open to adults, children, and families. No prior experience is required.
We work with hand-building techniques, allowing time for experimentation and attentive work with clay.The workshops take place in a calm, focused atmosphere and are personally accompanied.
January 18, 2026, 12.00
Clay workshop · children & adults
February 8, 2026, 12.00
Clay workshop · children & adults
March 22, 2026, 12.00
Clay workshop · children & adults
Location: Stadtufer, Atelier Alena Kost, Lichtensteig
Group size: Small groups (up to 4 participants)
Price: 60 CHF per person
(materials, firing, and glazing included)Finished works are fired and glazed by me and can be collected later.
Individual workshops are available upon request.