POST-VANITAS ERA — MANIFESTO

(Declaration)

This text is not an explanation.
It is a declaration.

It does not request interpretation.
It does not seek agreement.

I declare the Post-Vanitas Era.

Vanitas once taught humanity
to contemplate death
through symbols of decay.

In this century,
such contemplation
has exhausted itself.

Death no longer needs to be remembered.
Survival does.

Post-Vanitas is not an image.
Not a style.
Not a decorative motif.

It is a condition in which
destruction is no longer the endpoint,
but the material
through which endurance becomes visible.

In this era,
objects are not completed forms.
They are witnesses.

Ceramics are not vessels of function,
but sites where

time presses,
fractures,
settles,
and remains.

What matters is not what is made,
but what withstands passage.

The work does not end at the object.

It unfolds through

action,
sediment,
circulation,
retrieval,
and sound—

fixed not as spectacle,
but as evidence.

Image is not representation.
It is testimony.

Narrative is not storytelling.
It is structure.

Publication is not promotion.
It is emergence.

By releasing these works
through contemporary networks—
rather than awaiting institutional permission—

Post-Vanitas affirms that

recognition follows formation,
not the reverse.

This movement rejects
vanity,
excess,
and performative prestige.

It does not aestheticize collapse.

It records
what remains after collapse
has already occurred.

Post-Vanitas does not mourn what was lost.
It names what continues.

I do not decorate ruin.
I mark persistence.

The Post-Vanitas Era begins here.

The concept and term “Post-Vanitas Era” were created by
Jiya Lim
Maison Philosophe, Busan
2025

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