The Ceramic Fire Corals (2025) emerge from Claudia Comte’s ongoing engagement with the natural world through her distinctive sculptural language. Building on her exploration of organic motifs—cacti, corals, and leaves—this series marks her first rendering of the five-pointed coral in ceramic. Drawing from marine biology and the fragile ecosystems of coral reefs, Comte uses this work to reflect on the delicate balance of life within marine environments and the broader environmental challenges they face.
The Ceramic Fire Corals articulate a nuanced tension between fragility and resilience. The natural fire coral, known for its painful toxin-laden branches, symbolizes vitality intertwined with vulnerability. Comte’s ceramic interpretation captures this paradox, emphasizing both the beauty and precarity of these organisms. The gradient of the sculptures—13 unique colors transitioning from white to black through shades of yellow and red—evokes the warming oceans and the specter of coral bleaching, a vital reference to the environmental pressures facing marine ecosystems today.
The use of ceramic, a material that combines delicacy with permanence, further underscores the inherent tensions in representing the resilience and fragility of natural systems. By highlighting the paradoxical qualities of fire coral, its capacity for defense and its susceptibility to external threats, Comte’s work examines the physical and symbolic transformations these organisms endure under escalating environmental stress.
