Corals
Corals is a collection of marine-like-creatures made in cold ceramics. They started as negative models of surfaces on which the molding clay was pressured against. Touching the ‘skin’ of women’s hand-knitted cloth, or the architecture of the city, and even objects in my studio, meant to establish relationship with memory and ancestral knowledge.
Togetherness is a base concept in Corals. When the investigation is close to memorabilia and geographies of ancestry, the final objects resemble fossils; not only because of their morphology but also because of the ‘presence’ of the element they recall in the void. It’s a combination of lived times that interests me as a residue of a flux that I want to learn from.
In later works, clay is shaped by hand but not on top of surfaces anymore. As the artistic objects become more autonomous, other issues I am interested in are added to this marine-like ecology. ‘Epiphytes’ originated from my research of social friendly plants that just live together for company, without being parasites. ‘Listeners’ embodies the desire to listen and learn from what is unknown about the sea and ecological knowledges. ‘Auga’ is my poetic coral texture, made of small parts combined for the construction of a new form_ named after the word ‘water’ in the Mirandese language of the border between Portugal and Spain.