ArPa: “From clay to yarn, from land to sea”

Clay and yarn. Two elements found in myths from different cultures about the origin of life. The designs of destinies, the construction of the past, present, and future. In our project for ArPa 2025, we present two artists who draw their lives and paths in contemporary art through these materials.

Kássia Borges, an indigenous Karajá woman, was born a ceramist and since the 1980s has used her traditional knowledge to speak through clay about her own life experience. Kássia's first work in the context of contemporary art is a series of pots named after her three children. The clay that creates the world also reproduces the lives generated by Kássia. Since then, the artist's work has followed her life's movements, sometimes dialoguing with her family relationships, sometimes with her professional dynamics. Always looking to nature as inspiration for form and content, Kássia Borges synthesizes and breathes her life into clay.

Nara Guichon weaves a possibility for the future, as she objectively uses discarded fishing nets from the sea as raw material in her quest to preserve the marine environment. Through the weaves, knots, and ties she makes with the nets, the artist seeks to build a new world where we respect and cherish living nature. Nara points to the care of our ecosystem, using art as a tool for resistance and aesthetic enjoyment. The artist's works carry organic forms that resemble marine creatures about to come to life in the form of seams and looms.