Anna Nunes van den Hoven

The project À Volta do Barro centers on the reconnection with a women-led ceramic tradition, rooted in collectivity and care for the earth. This lineage of heritage, originating on the African continent, spread to Cape Verde, the Caribbean, South America, and later Europe. Histories of colonization disrupted it across many geographies, while elsewhere it remains under pressure. Together with heritage carriers and communities, the tradition is remembered, practiced, and reconnected. Through residencies with heritage carriers, I engage with this heritage, their stories, and contexts. In processes of shared creation, the tradition is embodied, renewed, and carried forward. My role is conceptual and facilitative: I create the conditions in which heritage carriers can recall, transmit, and transform their knowledge through dialogue, residencies, and clay workshops. They act as leaders, mentors and teachers; I assist, support, and document. In this way, the tradition was reconnected with Lisbon (2024) through Isabel Sanches (Trás-de-Monti, Cape Verde), and strengthened with the potters of Rabil on the island of Boa Vista (Cape Verde). The trajectory continues to unfold with its next phase in Rotterdam. Each transmission leaves its trace on canvas. The canvases absorb local clay, record gestures, and register encounters, becoming archives that make the act of transmission visible and literally preserve the fingerprints of communities. Together, they form a transnational body in which the collective reconnection with this women-led tradition becomes tangible and felt.