THE STORY

I am Vanesa Cabezas, a Colombian woman who believes that art is a tool for social change. Latin American art, craft, and culture are my passions. My last seven years have been devoted to learning, building, and recognizing myself in ceramics, working hand in hand with communities in Colombia, including child and adult populations. Through my experience in the community, I have been able to work in the fields of art and ceramics teaching.

 

I studied arts at the university and began making ceramics, learning from different teachers including potters from small towns in Colombia. This is where I got a new perspective on ceramics, giving value to traditional ceramics, those that are based on the simple, the near, and the possible. To me, these are the things I want to convey with my clay pieces and processes. My goal is to create something more human, as close to reality as possible, closer to my community, by utilizing pre-Hispanic ceramic aesthetics, miniature sculptures, and words.

 

During the last year, I co-founded the ceramic collective Les Monarcas de Barro (LMdB), where we are connecting the expression of ceramics with community reflection, teaching and sharing topics such as recognizing our migrant identity and knowing our rights and values within our diversity in a creative way. We also work to expand access to pottery learning for people from diverse migrant communities.