À Volta do Barro – canvases and additional photography:
Photos by Larissa Ambachtsleer.
À Volta do Barro
À Volta do Barro (Around the Clay) centers on the reconnection with a ceramic tradition that has been predominantly practiced by women. Originating on the African continent, this tradition spread to Cape Verde, the Caribbean, South America, and later through diasporic movements to Europe. Across many geographies, histories of colonization disrupted its continuity, while in other contexts the tradition remains under pressure. Together with heritage carriers and communities, the tradition is remembered, practiced, and renewed.
Each act of renewal leaves its trace on canvas. These canvases absorb local clay, record gestures, and register encounters, becoming archives that make processes of transmission visible and materially present. Together, they form a transnational body, literally carrying the handmarks of communities, in which the collective renewal of this ceramic tradition becomes tangible and felt.
The project unfolds through long-term collaboration with heritage carriers, their stories, and their local contexts. Cultural knowledge remains situated with its holders, while the artistic work emerges through co-creation. Within these collective processes, the tradition is embodied, renewed, and carried forward. My role is conceptual and facilitative, focused on supporting the conditions in which heritage carriers can recall, share, and transform their knowledge through dialogue and shared practices. Heritage carriers act as leaders and mentors; I support, accompany, and document these processes. In this way, the tradition re-emerged in Lisbon (2024) and Rotterdam (2025) through the work of Cape Verdean potters Isabel Sanches (Trás-de-Monti) and Alcides Morais (Rabil), and was further strengthened within the ceramic community of Rabil on the island of Boa Vista. The trajectory continues to unfold, with its next phase taking place in São Tomé.
This trajectory has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of Virgínia Fróis (artist and professor of ethno-ceramics), Ricardo Barbosa Vicente (curator and architect), Melanie Soares, Luisa Soares Lima, Jorge Lizardo (Foundation Bruggenbouwers), Verhalenhuis Belvédère, Foundation MIJ, and the community center Post West–Rotterdam, with the support of the municipalities of Lisbon and Boa Vista (Portugal and Cape Verde), Gerstaecker BV, the Dutch Fund Culturalparticipation, and the Ministry of Culture and Creative Industries of Cape Verde.