Once There Was and Once There Wasn’t, by Corinne Silva, 2023/24

Bienniale A Dobradiça - Encontros Contemporâneos

Formed of hand-produced clay tiles, a newly commissioned site-specific installation, Once There Was and Once There Wasn’t, has been installed in the footprint of a demolished building in Mação’s town centre.

To learn the tile-making technique, the artist worked with nearby factory owner Marco Cadete. His is the last remaining workshop in Portugal using moulds to hand-make bricks and tiles from locally sourced clay using a wood-fired kiln. Marco gained his skills from his grandfather from whom he inherited the factory. Marco and Corinne shared the tile-making technique with a group of workshop participants, and 320 tiles were collectively produced before being fired in a traditionall wooden kiln.

This outdoor installation embodies the history, and decline, of industry in the region as well as how the land itself is harnessed in production.

The scale shape of the tile is a motif for the artist, referencing a form found in human and animal architecture, the layered and repeated scale a system of coating and protection for bodies and buildings.

The production of the piece continues artist Corinne Silva’s inquiry into how intergenerational skills and knowledge sharing alongside collective imagining might be understood as forms of survival and resistance.  

Curated by Cécile Bourne-Farrell

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Supported by the Goethe Institute, Culture Moves Europe and Maçao City Council

With thanks to Joana Rosa, Jabulani Maseko, Marco Cadete, Jim Varney, Rui Santos, and all those who participated in the workshops.

Special thanks to Copper Ray Maseko and Adriana Peixoto for their support of tile production.

 All the images copyright: Jim Varney, besides the last image taken from There Was and Once there Was, by Corinne Silva