PAVEMENT KINTSUGI
JOE KIBRIA x STUDIO JANNEKE
2019

In 2019, Joe got in touch with a story that immediately hooked me:

“This isn’t the crack in my actual skull of course, but it is the crack where, two years ago now, at 1:14am, an unknowing cab driver picked me up off the ground spinning, and dabbed the blood pouring out of my right ear.”

Doctors discovered a 7-inch crack in his skull. As Joe had been unconscious and there were no witnesses or security cameras, he is still unsure of what happened. Two years without a sense of smell or taste followed, during which Joe built himself back up and started to heal.

This brought him to kintsugi: “Last year I donated to Bart’s Charity, who support the Royal London Hospital, but this second year I wanted to focus on simply honouring progress. Kintsugi is the Japanese art form of repairing damaged ceramics with a gentle flourish of precious metal.” 

Joe sent me his story and a picture of the cracked pavement tile. On a rainy Friday morning, I helped him fill in the crack with gold – in return for a donation to Art Against Knives, a charity close to my heart. Celebrating his progress, just a few days short of the incident’s two-year anniversary.

Joe: “It takes a little time to heal but emerges more beautiful than before. Just like this golden crack in the floor of Boundary Street, London: the city that birthed, broke and fixed me.”