The first poems came via the readings for the On Black Study seminar led by Ishy Pryce-Parchment I was part of in Madrid.

We read Dionne Brand

From Inventory

I was recommended to read NourbeSe Philip

From She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks

I was particularly touched and impacted by NourbeSe Philip’s poems on language, racism and the painful process of understanding and shaping her experiences using a language - English - that was never hers as a Caribbean woman in Canada.

English
is my mother tongue.
A mother tongue is not
not a foreign lan lan lang
language
l/anguish
anguish
—a foreign anguish.

She writes on Discourse on the Logic of Language. A poem she dissects on this interview on the Commonplace Podcast. (Thank you, Nina! ♥︎) Head to minute 39:54 to be swept away by the softness of her voice as she gives rhythm to her words.

I have a million thoughts on using English as a non-native English speaker to make sense of one’s (ours, my) existence. Last week, I run a workshop at the V&A East on writing. A first for me. I used to teach pottery a lot for many years, which made me develop a profound rejection of teaching. So for this special event, I chose not to teach, but simply to share my relationship to words and create a space for others to join me. After an introductory talk about my practice, different participants at different times asked me if I write in Spanish, which I don’t do and even worse - some would think -, I find quite challenging. It may sound odd it being my mother tongue, but at the end of the day I live in England, my life is in English, I mostly consume culture in English and I mostly read in English. My identity has been shaped here, in the UK, in English. I became aware of my black womanhood reading Angela Davis about a decade ago and since then, it’s been through the black British experience that I’ve made sense of mine. Travelling and sharing in English while travelling.

“In the vortex of New World slavery, the African forged new and different words, developed strategies to impress her experience on the language. The formal standard language was subverted, turned upside down, inside out, and even sometimes erased. (…) Most of these ‘techniques’ are rooted in African languages; their collective impact on the English language would result in the latter being, at times, unrecognizable as English. Bad English. Broken English. Patois. Dialect. These words are for the most part negative descriptions of the linguistic result of the African attempting to leave her impress on the language”.

More NourbeSe Philip on TheAbsenseofWritingorHowIAlmostBecaseaSpy

While my connection to English has little to do with that of the Africans NourbeSe Philip is referring to, I cannot help but make connections to my use of it, for it surely is a tad demonic, broken, bad. I keep learning and improving (I hope!), but reading NorbeSe Philip’s reflections has validated my faulty use of English as the main channel to express myself and connect; to add depth to my practice.

On some book somewhere on my bookshelf, Ursula K. Le Guin invites us to invent words. Something that, despite no longer remembering where or when I read it, got stuck in my head. And then I read these words by none other than Elif Shafak:

So I wonder - is poetry my preferred genre sometimes as it gives me an added freedom to the freedom I already feel writing in English thanks to the distance I feel both consciously and unconsciously? I don’t know, but it might make sense. Some people argue that doing therapy in a foreign language, in a foreign country, can allow us to access spaces and dark corners we would not dare go to or even realise they exist in our mother tongues. And art, after all, is therapy.

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Some pics from the workshop at the V&A East last week ♥︎

Thanks for reading!
Bisila x

*

A close up from Dumile Femi’s Hector Pieterson (1987) currently on display at Reina Sofia museum in Madrid. That artwork is a like a secondary act, the main one being the African Guernica, which was painted by Femi twenty years prior in 1967.

After a very comical series of scenes that saw us entering the museum, leaving it to drop the bags in the cloakroom across the patio, the security woman asking me to gift her my pound coin as ‘you don’t need it’ said she ‘but I don’t live here so I do need it’ said I, entering the museum, leaving it for one to smoke while another one went to get our tickets across the patio, entering the museum for a third and last time and up the stairs, still getting acquainted with each other, new friends, to the second floor walking past artworks I had seen before but they had not following the steps of the one who fetched the tickets, a seeming leader, a father, a community organiser in action, who jokingly replied ‘I can smell where they are’ when I asked why he was so certain of his steps across the rooms of a museum he was not familiar with, albeit he knew he smelt it indeed and we arrived. On one side, El Guernica. On the other, the African one.

If we begin with Michel Foucault as our primary methodological and theoretical frame — if Foucault is our referential scaffolding— we will, most certainly, draw Foucauldian conclusions writes Katherine McKittrick on Dear Science and Other Stories. She reflects upon ‘referencing, sourcing, and crediting’ as a way to take us outside of ourselves in the process of thinking or creating knowledge. Going outside of ourselves as in unhinging ourselves, unknowing ourselves, to open ‘up a different conversation about why we do what we do, here, in this place, that despises us’, to create, together, in community, collectively, ‘unexpected intellectual conversations’.

And still, displacing the self, unknowing who we are, is awful: it is indeterminate and unpredictable and lonely.

Amen, sister.

So there I was in front to Femi’s artwork, analysing it to find the similarities to the artwork, turning around to revisit a painting I must have seen a million times, El Guernica. So there I was going through the lines on the curatorial text I had just read the one introducing the display where it said that it is unknown who gave Femi’s piece the title. Was it him? Was it the gallery? We don’t know, but as far as the curator was concerned, Femi had not rejected it and so are we encountering it as it is shown outside of South Africa for the first time ever. Has it been noticed because of the title? Because of the reference to the artwork? Is that how we the West can understand it, connect to it, appreciate it? And my mind kept going back to McKittrick. She says:

Sara Ahmed makes the very smart observation that citation practices are gendered and racialized. Citation decisions are a political project for Ahmed because, she argues, absenting white men (from our bibliographies, references, footnotes) reorganizes our feminist knowledge worlds. By excluding white men from her (our) bibliographies she (we) can generate new ideas and chip away at, and possibly break down, the walls of patriarchy that have excluded and refuse feminist ways of knowing. Decentering the citations, and thus the experiences, of white men unmakes a scholarly system that champions and normalizes white patriarchal scholarly traditions.

Amen, sister.

I have no issue with Femi. I found it funny or interesting or good food for thought how some of the theories or conversations I had just been part of during a three-day symposium on Black Study at Reina Sofia - how we collectively shared thoughts on how we, artists and cultural workers, could find alternatives to the post-colonial Western patriarchal system of believes and ways of thinking that has been imposed on us - were being at play displayed at the very museum that had held all that thinking just until then.

Since 2016 I have read about five books by men and sometimes I am told ‘how much I am missing’ by removing men from my intellectual nourishment and oh I don’t care. How much the world has been missing by removing women, queer people and people of colour from the intellectual nourishment of our societies for far too long. I wonder. If I want to think differently to dream of a different world I cannot read white men or else I will end up thinking like them. What do you say?

what we tell each other about what we know and how to know, contain how to refuse practices of dehumanization.

She said.

Naming demands that we ask about the unnamed and honor the unnameable.

And what do we say?
Amen, sister.

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And the wheels kept turning…

After my solo show I took a break I got ill on my birthday I climbed a couple of mountains in the French Pyrenees ate a lot of cheese and some pastries; took what felt like a million trains across Spain and France to the UK to then fly back to Spain and four days later come back home, the one in London. In the meantime the V&A East opened with two of my works on display. In the meantime, a very dear friend opened her solo show in London - if you are local do not miss it! In the meantime, I got a new sofa at home, the one in London, from which I am writing so perhaps the wheels will slow dow in May.

Luckily, on Friday March 20th, right after the race to finish pieces, pack them, install and open the exhibition the previous evening, Maxine Pennington and Rachitha Seneviratne hosted an Intentions music event to mark the Spring Equinox 🌸 Sounds from different parts of the world filled the exhibition space taking us, the lucky audience, on trips of different kinds depending on our sorrows, needs and emotional states. I cried, a lot, and I believe most people did too. It felt like a warm bath, a proper reset for the soul, the heart and the mind. Much needed.

Between sobs and movements of quietude lying down on the floor, I got some unloads. I was surrounded by my works, people I love and music. I was still. I was happy. And so I felt a million presences. Energies coming to hug me, energies joining in. And so I did some writing as Maxine had left crayons and paper for the session.

Back at the studio the following Monday I recorded them on one of my little notebooks onto which I empty my brain and process experiences through writings and drawings. My playbooks. So for lack of better words to express how moved, grateful, happy, exhausted, proud, inspired and encouraged I feel at the moment after my first UK solo show, here I leave you some of those reflections.

I recommend you to follow Maxine on Soundcloud for her monthly mixes at Radio Alhara and if you miss the exhibition as much as I do, you can…

• listen to the soundscape here

• look at the collection and some beautiful installation photos here

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I am taking some time off work, the studio, London and… Substack! So no posts in April. I will be back in May 🌸
Lots of love,

Bisila x

We all have probably held a sacred object. An object to which we have ascribed a meaning or the power to heal us. An object that can allow us to dive into a different dimension, through prayer or meditation. I am thinking of a rosary, its beads walking us through lines to be repeated over and over again. I cannot remember when this happened, but once I was at a convent and we had to walk along a corridor, back and forth, while praying, a rosary in our hands, guide and anchor. I am thinking of the stones we were given by the shaman during a family constellations retreat I went to with my sister some years ago. In shamanism any object can be charged to help us, it is up to us. I am thinking of el pilar in the Cathedral-Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in my home tome, Zaragoza. A marble pillar of which only a small section is accessible to us, human beings of flesh and bones, a little bit lower than average height, perhaps, so that most of us have to kneel down and kiss it. Its surface now rather hard to access as the touch of millions of lips have eroded this stone on which the Virgin once appeared to St. James the Greater.

Objects galore across religions and cultures. Objects crafted. Objects carrying both their sacred meaning and the mastery of the maker, one we rarely know.

It is from those objects that I draw inspiration when I make objects to have casted in bronze. The few I know, the thousands I will never. Most of them I call them goddesses, for to me they are guides that teach me about my own making, about the intuitive gestures and the textures I am to express. It all started with porcelain after a visit to multi-disciplinary artist Marcia Michael’s home studio. This was years ago. She contacted me as she, a renown photographer whose work I love and had seen at Autograph, had started working with clay. The pieces she showed me where exactly what I needed to see - proper downloads from somewhere else, her ancestors, her angels. We talked about the works, she cooked for me and as soon as I left her home I rushed back to the studio to make. Three minutes per object, porcelain as the chosen clay, a chance to create something without thinking. Marvelled at what I had created, I started a ritual. Each time I got to the studio, I made these studies in porcelain, to get into the mood, to learn about my own making and feel guided. A ritual that changed my practice.

And from those, the first waxes were born, and from those, the first bronzes. I have not shown works in bronze that much, so I am really excited to have a selection I am well proud of at Ile Ọkàn (House of the Soul), my solo show opening this week at OmVed Gardens (March 20-29).

Photos of the bronzes by Christian Cassiel

As you can imagine, I have tons of those studies in porcelain now and as someone who hates accumulating things, it is not ideal. Fortunately, this accumulation of special little objects charged with my energy have allowed me to start a different ritual. Whenever someone I love moves houses, has something special going on in their lives, or deserves a ‘thank you’ from me, I gift them one as a little totem. A protector. For that’s all we seek for, after all, to be protected, don’t we? To know that we are not alone, that our fates are in the hands of a higher something, power, divinity, that makes our existence less arduous, more meaningful. A presence that is often simply manifested in those around us. I love that idea from shamanism that anything can be a ‘charged guide’. And if we think about it, we all are sacred, so perhaps all we need is to be more aware of our own energy and power to heal, and share it. That is, our own ability to love and through that love, protect us all.

Photos by Karina Smagulova (2022)

Thanks for reading! xx

Fast forward a year and a half later, that solo show is opening in about two weeks, on March 19th. Alas, it is not called ‘In the thick of it’, but Ile Ọkàn (House of the Soul). A name that might sound familiar to those who have been reading me for the last year, as it is the title of the installation I built in Ikise, during a residency at G.A.S. Foundation.

And why that name in the first place? Why in Yoruba? One of the things that I loved the most about Nigeria is the way different religions and belief systems (seem to) cohabit. So that first Ile Ọkàn was an homage to that wealth as well as an invitation to anyone to go into the shrine/altar/temple I created, regardless of their believes, to share and be in community.

I had many doubts about keeping the name lest it would be seen as cultural appropriation as this new shrine/altar/temple is in London, decontextualised to a degree. When I asked a good Yoruba friend about my linguistic conundrum she told me, it is just another language, we always use Latin, Greek and other languages to title our creations… it is OK. Cultural appreciation instead, I guess.

And so Ile Ọkàn remained ♥︎

I am equal parts excited and terrified, as you can imagine. This show has been in my brain and fingertips for a long, long while…

The Liberations pieces have been in the making for about four years.

I made the prototypes for the bronze sculptures in Benin City (Nigeria) last year working with Ohi during an intense two-week residency with Angels & Muse when I got to visit the Benin’s Guild of Bronze Casters and dive into the material’s history.

I started working with the Baney Clay back in 2020 and now the last few pieces of this collection of 60 vessels will be shown and hopefully, they will find a new home to bring beauty to.

And the newest objects in my life, the stools, however fresh and playful, are the embodiment of all the knowledge and skill I have gathered since I started making, as I have used a myriad of techniques to create them. From all the learnings from my days making mugs, attaching handles; to my latest explorations with sculpture, working from solid masses of clay — explorations that have seen many a disaster in the kiln in the last few months…! But that’s how we learn!

So much, so much, is going onto this show and I cannot wait for it to be ready. I cannot wait to come out of the thick of it, at least this thick of it.

There will be sound, there will be research materials, there will be photography and there will be a book. My third publication this time designed by the one and only Samar Maakaroun and her team at Pentagram. For yes, I mean business, my friends!

For those of you based in London or the UK, the show will be open to the public from March 20 to 29. A short period of time for a show that is containing so much —I’d like to think. So don’t miss it!

For those of you in other geographies, I will do my best to document it all and continue sharing, as I get into the thick of my next endeavour, which has already rather fully shaped in my brain.

Here I leave you some more beautiful photos by Christian Cassiel who visited the studio in January to immortalise some of the objects that will be exhibited. ♥︎

I had never had so many different people feeding into and contributing to a project of mine, which makes me feel incredibly lucky to be surrounded by such talented humans who also love my work. A big thank you to all of them: Maxine Pennington (sound), Samar Maakaroun (graphic identity & book design), Darius Enache (graphic design), Ohi Ohiwerei (bronze master), South London Foundry (bronze casters), Christian Cassiel (photography), Seedarchives (research materials), Ben Swift (endless amounts of patience with my plaster experiments at Morley College), Nieves Noha (my curator, as well as my sister) and Claire Pearse (gallerist and champion since 2018).

It takes a village!

Primus V

Baney Clay B60 - the very last one ♥︎

Goddess

Altar ring

Water jug

Someone recently told me I was ‘very gallopy’ (🐎). This person meant it in a romantic way, as in, I get on my fantasy and here we go, my fantasy and I, galloping towards the horizon. And I am gallopy (🐎) indeed. And that is the biggest challenge for me. To manage this wild, deep desire to gallop; to tame the burning fire inside; to adjust to others’ speeds; to be patient and accepting. In a nutshell, to hold my horses (🐎).

I am sorry about the emojis, but also I am not — what can I say, the emoji vibe has been unleashed.
Blame it on the fire.
Blame it on the horse.
(🔥🐎)

Perhaps I lack a lot of patience in my personal life sometimes, and perhaps it is because I give it all to the clay, to the materials, to the creative process. I am an artist-in-residence at the Sarabande Foundation and each week we have visitors doing walk throughs. Gallerists, collectors, patrons, you name it. They go studio after studio listening to us talking about our practices. One of the visits last week was by a lovely gallery owner that, when I was telling her about how different I can be compared to the requirements of a material like clay (slow, gentle, patient), she looked at me and said: what a strange choice of material then, why would you do that? Fair. One the one hand, I believe that the material chose me via the friends in London who recommended me I gave it a go when I moved here. On the other, I know it is one of the greatest teachers I’ve ever had. It’s changed me.
It’s also a work in progress, let’s not kid ourselves (🔥🐎).

Photo by Christian Cassiel (Instagram)

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For the last four years I have been developing a new body of work. On and off, as I have been making these pieces at Morley College. Titled Liberations, these plaster and clay sculptures are the depiction of that tension (🔥🐎). Like I want to break free, but I am pulled back by the past, the pain, by others’ needs, by the things that shaped me. We all feel like this sometimes, I guess, and I touched upon this also on the post from January 6. Those of us who want to gallop and find our true selves and live it all, hungrily, often feel that tension with the things that are holding us down/back. Things that are also teaching us, though. Things we must experience however tedious, painful and relentless they might feel. That’s the lesson. And so we are constantly trying to balance it all. And so we float, perhaps. An orbiting exercise, looking for our own flow albeit somehow necessarily tethered.

Plaster is the opposite to clay, I find. It changes consistency fast so I need to be in the moment and just be playful. I have a tendency to make pieces that first require a very long slow process, by which I mean I would make full (‘finished’) shapes and even fire them, to then quickly ‘destroy them’, by which I mean to actually finish them — to do the decoration, to sculpt them. Like in the case of the Ignis pieces, my first collection mixing plaster and clay (pic below). The clay piece is fired and then in about three-four minutes the plaster goes on and if it goes wrong… well, sayonara.

I liked those pieces but they still felt kind of tamed and static. So through a lot of experimentation and trial and error and balloons covered in plaster exploding on my face, I arrived at Liberations. A loop that sees one material create the other and while each one of them have their own identity, the connection is so strong that they are forever tethered, no matter how much they might wish to be set free.

I thought today, as this new year begins, was the perfect occasion to first show one of them to the world.

Happy galloping! 🔥🐎

Photos by Christian Cassiel

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🐎 Free the horses 🐎

This week is also the beginning of a series of events and exhibitions that will see me galloping around until the end of March. Here you have some dates for your diary:

• Today opens ‘Black Atlantic Makers: Conversations’ at the Crafts Study Centre in Farnham (UK). Centred around the multi-panel, woven and embroidered Tapestry of Black Britons, the show includes pieces by Black makers represented within the four material areas of the Crafts Study Centre’s collections - ceramics, wood, textiles and calligraphy. An inter-generational dialogue emphasising both continuity and divergence among Black makers, revealing how shared histories and diasporic connections give rise to a wide range of formal and conceptual expressions within each material area.

• On Thursday February 19, I will be in Farnham for a talk at The Farnham Pottery.

• It is that time of the year again and Collect Art Fair will be on next week, from Wednesday February 25 to Sunday March 1. This will be the fifth (!!) consecutive year I am showing work at Collect and it’s going to be an exciting one as I have works with two galleries: Thrown and House of Bandits (Sarabande Foundation gallery) (🔥)

• To mark International Women’s Day, Sarabande Foundation is curating a show titled ‘All That’s Been Given’. An exploration of inheritance and the transferral of meaning and matter between generations, that will be on from March 4 to March 11. You can join us via this link.

• And then… a big one opens on March 19th, but I shall hold my horses for now… Watch this space!

Photo by Christian Cassiel

Along with the infamous stories of me smuggling clay from one continent to another, I have also collected fun anecdotes of me getting stools through security at airports, or getting them packed in-situ and checked-in for free. As I keep recommending people, all it takes is a balanced mix of sass, assertiveness and cuteness. And all doors shall open for you.

I have stools from Ivory Coast, Ghana, Senegal and Ethiopia. A small collection I am hoping to keep growing as I keep travelling. I have not been to Ethiopia, just yet, but my friend Christian introduced me to the fabulous world of the Spitafields Market sellers this summer and I got one of my favourite stools ever. It had to be done.

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Around this time last year, I met Fiyin Koko in Lagos who very generously welcomed me in her home and studio. We spent a lovely morning drinking her delicious homemade teas, getting to know each other and making small stools. The maquettes of our dreams. I fell in love with the two little cute stools I made. Shapes that simply came out of my fingers, an amalgamation of shapes I had worked with in the past and the endless shapes and textures I had been seeing during my first weeks in Nigeria and the prior two months in Senegal. We never fired those, but I carried them with me as I went from city to city, from country to country and more recently, from studio to studio.

I made some larger maquettes, or rather tests, during my time at Thread in Senegal and as soon as I got back to London last summer I knew I had to properly bring those to life. Using those first maquettes as inspiration, as well as the stools I could find in the fantastic book collection at Seed archives, I have created a collection of four stools. Different shapes, designs, textures, concepts and clays. Some are closer to vessels from my past, some are closer to the sculptures I wish to make one day. Decorated with beads from Benin City (Nigeria), interpretations of the different ways in which stools can be carried in different countries, and the mere traces of my fingers’ commands. I don’t think I have ever enjoyed making anything as much as I have loved (and still do, for there are more on their way…) creating these stools.

No other objects I have ever made have made me feel the amount of awe and excitement and joy that these provide. To the extent that, sometimes, I cannot believe I have made them. They have an identity and a character, so strong and particular, that they somehow feel like objects sent to me, rather than made by me. Perhaps that’s what it is. I do hope that’s what it is.

Can you sit on them? Is the first question people ask me when I talk about them or show them to them. Of course you can! I reply as I proudly demonstrate it, a big smile on my face. Proud mother. Proud lover. Proud admirer.

Some of these will be first shown at Collect Art Fair (February 25 to March 1). More opportunities to see them will follow, as well as new iterations.

Photo by Christian Cassiel

Each collection within the project has so far comprised of about 20 pieces, each of a different shape and a different mix of clays. Vessels that were born out of my hands as the wheel spun. Intuitive making, subconscious making, driven by all the images seen on books, all the pots seen being made, pots touched, pots loved.

Each pot unique. Some whiter made with higher percentages of porcelain or white stoneware (what I call the ‘good clays’); some darker, the Baney clay (the ‘bad clay’) more present. The higher the amount of Baney clay in the mix, the more dramas in the result. From bloating to cracks due to having pushed this African earthenware to higher temperatures, as well as due to both clays having been forced to coexist despite their molecular disparities.

My first observations were about the metaphors behind those cracks and ‘faults’. A clash of civilisations. How immigration is accepted, how ‘darker beings’ from the Global South are welcomed, but only to a certain extent. Only if they/we assimilate.

From Baney Clay Part 4, photo by Maxine Pennington

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Since 2020 when I made the first iteration and as more and more of these pieces have been exhibited and sold, I have made another observation that is still connected to those initial reflections and the concept behind the project. It turns out —according to the anecdotal data I’ve collected— that the pieces that generally take longer to sell are the darker ones. The ones with more ‘bad clay’, the more ‘Southern’ ones, the blacker, the more African. Funny, is it not? That the material experimentation to open a conversation about race and perception and the Western gaze on art and its history is then ratified by its reception. Kind of silently. But I was paying attention.

Because I like to be contrarian, as the baby that was pushed to leave my mother’s womb to be born that I am, I have chosen to now mostly work with black clay. Before my go-to clay was terracotta to honour the work of the women who have historically been belittled, ignored or forgotten. Now, I am still choosing blackness, just more literally.

The black clay that I use is rather coarse, with a lot of grog, so that it is easier to coil with is. So that —I hope— the shapes are more resilient and I can push them as trouble-free as ceramics can be (so really not trouble free at all, but you get me). It is a horrendous clay to throw with though, and all of my larger vessels are always first thrown and then handbuilt. The sides of my hands burn due to the friction of the little particles of grog against the wheel head as the pots spin. Yet it is worth it and my skin seems to heal fast enough. I guess the clay itself heals it afterwards as I keep on making.

This week I am showing the first Primus piece made with black clay (Primus V below) at the London Art Fair.

Primus V (2025)

A couple weekends ago doing a photoshoot with my dear and talent friend Christian Cassiel, I asked him to choose his favourite piece. He chose the darkest one of the whole lot. I told him about this research of mine and how glad I was that he loved the blackest vessel the most. He looked at me as though he was not entirely convinced by this story I was telling him, or maybe he simply was catching up with the reflections I had been having for a long time. After a moment of pause he said, well, I just love all things black. And so do I.

*Baney Clay Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

A disclaimer on black clay

I must confess I have not done the other research yet: I don’t know the composition of this industrial clay I am using and something inside me tells me it is not going to be cute. So apologies if anyone reading is aware of this and therefore rolling their eyes at this story, for I might be complicit in other societal and global disasters by way of using this clay. I have to do this other research — it’s coming!

Lastly, if you are in London…

Pop by the London Art Fair this week. More details here.

On Friday I will be part of talk about ‘Material Meaning and the Unexpected’. A conversation with artist Emily Ponsonby, chaired by Len Gordon, to explore how material choices can carry cultural memory, personal narrative and conceptual intent.

1:30 - 2:30pm Talks Theatre, Business Design Centre, Islington, N1 0QH

For the last three years, I have been developing a body of work that touches on this: on the tension between that which shapes us and our urge to break free from it. To shape ourselves. A tension that is met with a gravitational pull towards the past, the pain, the experiences that are part of us, even if we want them to disappear. It can be a heartbreak or a painful break-up. It can be the disjointed reality of those of us who migrate, or maybe without physical or geographical movement, leave our ‘homes’ behind.

I have just finished a wonderful book titled The Island of the Missing Trees. A beautifully written piece of historical fiction by Elif Shafak, who’s already featured on this Substack as I’ve become a big fan of hers in the last three or so months. Placed between London and Cyprus, the book is about war, love, loneliness, generational trauma and trees, specifically, a fig tree which also is one of the narrators. At some point it says…

“After all, the world is full of immigrants, runaways, exiles… encouraged, you break free and travel as far as you can, then one day you look back and realize it was coming with you all along, like a shadow. Everywhere we go, it’ll follow us, this city, this island.”

Spanish writer, philosopher and curator Paul B. Preciado brings the lives and experiences of migrants, stray dogs (particularly those in Athens) and trans folks to the same level on An Apartment on Uranus: Chronicles of the Crossing. Stories of transgression and deviancy; third experiences. I am writing about the book out of memory as I read it years ago and I don’t have it here, I have it at home. Wasn’t I home? Anyone challenging the boundaries of the cis-hetero-techno-scientific capitalist system is a migrant, a threat to the status quo that consequently needs to be ostracised, criminalised and persecuted.

“We are in the waiting room of the world and it is expanding (for migrants, for people between identities). We are waiting. You exist but you don’t have a political existence.”

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Following one of my sister’s pieces of advice today I made my own lunch. I rebelled against the grip of the Castilian-mother-cook system of power and control. No, I don’t want any more meat. No, I don’t like ham, which doesn’t seem to land on some of my aunts’ brains as I am asked the exact same thing year after year. ‘Are you vegetarian now then?’ Didn’t I answer that question already, several times? And it seems that that makes me less Spanish, less comprehensible, more foreign, more alien. So so be it then. I am home, or am I not? I’m an expat on home soil.

Last night, on January 1st, after the delicious New Years Eve feast of seafood followed by, of course, some meat, and then the copious New Year’s late lunch on a day when perhaps most human beings want peace and quiet, the matriarchs started preparing dinner at around 8.30pm once I was done with a pottery lesson for my niece and nephews. My niece had been gifted a kids’ pottery wheel for Christmas, so I was summoned to share my knowledge, which I did joyfully after a brief moment of peace and quiet in my room, while next door in the living/dining room and still at the table, conversations were had and uncomfortable naps were taken —the classic fist on the forehead à la ‘The Thinker’ by August Rodin. So as the matriarchs set off to the kitchen to start preparing for the next (and last) supper, I carried out a quick survey. My dad was a tiny wee bit hungry, which he brought to life with his thumb and index finger, pretty much touching, less than a millimetre apart, barely leaving any room for the air to flow between them. The rest of the adults were not hungry, their faces clearly demonstrating that eating was indeed the very last thing they wished for that moment. And yet, as the matriarchs said, if we prepare something, we’ll eat it. Like robots with no will power, we sat at the table and ate and ate. If it is this hard to change behaviours in families, the masses following the norms, the traditions, without questioning if it is good for them, how are we going to change global systems of abuse that are rooted in centuries of exploitation and brainwashing, I wonder.

And then, those who rebel are the problem, the outcasts. And we go home and we don’t feel at home for we cannot be ourselves. And we go to the other home and something is amiss.

“The crossing is the place of uncertainty, of non-evidence, of the strange. And this is not weakness, it is a power."

Paul B. Preciado, ‘An Apartment on Uranus’

‘I didn’t want to start the year like this’, I told my sister, to which she said, ‘maybe that’s exactly how you needed to start year’. Exactly what another friend said after I had messaged her to report on my January 2nd state of affairs. Another friend I also messaged said —quoting someone else—, ‘even this will come to pass’.

And as Elif Shafak says in The Island of the Missing Trees…

Some day this pain will be useful to you.

I hope more and more people keep rebelling in 2026, keep challenging the status quo, however that might look like to each one of us. Starting in February, it is the year of the Fire Horse, a rare and powerful event that occurs only once every 60 years, Gemini said. A “double fire” energy year —freedom, passion, transformation and bold action.

When my sister started telling me about how the reason I felt like shit was because I had stepped out of my square, she asked me, “so now you’ve turned around 180 degrees and you cannot see your square; what do you see?” Darkness was my answer. The lesson was to find a way to find light in that darkness, for this is where I am now; and to listen to my body to rest and reset, which, according to the Chinese Horoscope predictions for an Earth Dragon like myself, should be the focus this year lest I wanna get burn out. So I guess it is indeed how I needed to start this year.

I wish you all the best x

It will take time, renewal. It will take time, healing.

Elif Shafak, ‘The Island of the Living Trees’

A snap from parallel universe where people are blue, they smile despite the rain, the rain is kind of green and trees have blue veins. By my me of the past back in 1992.

“As long as there’s tomorrow
the sun will rise again”

I finished 2024 asking the universe for a bunch of things for 2025, one of them being ‘falling in love’. I wanted to fall in love in 2025.

As the end of the year approaches and I do my traditional reviews, I am discovering and being awed by the amount of things I have fallen in love with this year.

From new friends that brought the most special connections, conversations and moments across cities and continents; to swimming —a sport I had at times resented this year to then… bang! have the spark back, all smitten all over again.

I have fallen in love with my practice and with being in the studio, making. I have fallen in love with my mornings. The little rituals I perform in the exact same sequence each day, regardless of the location, before the daily action starts, especially during the Autumn months in London when all is dark. I have fallen in love with them so much that I often wish the day would end, to go to bed so that the morning can come back again.

And I have fallen in love with some artists and their art. Here’s a wee list.

Ranti Bam

Adebunmi Gbadebo

Ithell Colquhoun

Etel Adnan

Kerry James Marshall

Anni Albers

Lee Ufan

And speaking of love and mornings

a song:

May 2026 bring us all more love in whichever shape or form.

Thanks for reading,
Bisila xx

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“Give birth and nurture.
Give birth without possessing
and foster without dominating.”

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

I read this some weeks ago. Freshly moved into my new studio, I would come feeling a little bit lost, weird and with not much to do. I still had vessels drying in my old studio, waiting for the final firings of the year, so I was coming to the new one feeling rather in between and without the necessary equipment to get into any real making (not that I had the energy or will for it, I won’t lie). Forcing myself to ‘do something remotely productive’, I would arrive, make a coffee and read a couple of entries from the Tao Te Ching. I guess I was hoping to feel inspired, enlightened, or simply less guilty.

Making is very much about giving birth. When I get stuck about motherhood, it gives me peace to think that my maternal energy (still not sure how much of that I have though…) is being put into good use: to create objects that people connect with, love and want to own. And there is so much more to come; so much more life to create and share.

Working with clay really requires a good dose of letting go. Of allowing the material to do its thing safely so that there’s no cracks or disasters in the kiln. I believe that in order to have a healthy relationship with the material it is key to understand that it has a life of its own —and that’s its beauty.

And so we birth without possessing.
We foster without dominating.

Water Jugs

That is why I love mixing different clays within one vessel. I do my best to visualise how the result might look like but there is always an element of surprise when the pieces come out of the kiln.

This Autumn I made two Water Jugs. One of them started tilting, as if tired, as it dried. And as we anticipated, it fell in the kiln. Respecting its new stance, the team at my old studio (who emptied the kiln in my absence) displayed it lying down and this Jug somehow makes more sense like that. Its wishes, our command.

Here I leave you some process videos and snaps of the final results. I hope you like them!

A storage jar fashioned out of clay:
absence makes the jar work.

Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching

Here I leave you some:

Etel’s Leporellos

I must love my friend Karina immensely for not only have I joined her book club (even if I really don’t like book clubs); but also have read the books (or rather more accurately, 50% of the books thus far, which is an excellent performance given my track record with book clubs).

We recently read The Beauty of Light: Interviews, which, as the review says, is ‘a lively and spontaneous interview with Etel Adnan about her absolute belief in the beauty of the world and the beauty of art.’

I didn’t know Etel before and I forced myself to not google her until I had finished the book. This was a fantastic idea. My favourite thing from all her ouvre are her Leporellos: consertina format paintings that meet words that meet automatic writing that meet magic. A beautiful encouragement to keep seeking for creative freedom and to keep having fun.

♥︎

On Friday I moved studios. Five years ago, I changed spaces as I wanted my practice to change. I wanted to stop making tableware, I wanted to lack the space to produce high volumes of work, to be more intentional and explore other more considerate (to me) ways of making. That lack of space I craved then became unbearable. In the last five years my practice has indeed changed, expanded, evolved — a lot. After dreaming of, praying for, and having worked towards a room of my own, I finally got it. It feels weird, I won’t lie. A door I can close to be alone? A space bigger than a meter-long desk? The possibility to be in the company of my work instead of being buried under it? A treat I am extremely grateful for.

As I enter a new chapter, I cannot help but look at the five years that have ‘just’ gone by with such tremendous speed. Inspiration comes from many sources, some conscious, some unconscious. Still, I think I could pin down what I wish for my work to be to two people: Theaster Gates & Rosalía. The former for his commitment to communities, multi-layered approach to art and love for pottery. The latter for her bravery to dive into the unknown pushing her own boundaries and those of music as an art practice. So I won’t take up too much of your time with ‘me and my own thoughts’ today. Instead, here I leave you two interviews that I find incredibly inspiring.

You are in for a treat, so I hope you find the time to watch them. Enjoy! x

*Porcelana by Rosalía, LUX

A tap tap tap
that goes round and round
Fingers that without touching talk, rule and create

Two parts
become one
A growing shape
From the 2 to the 3
the different Ds
evolving

Birthing life

A vessel that will be valued by what’s visible outside but
that cannot be held together without the intimacy of what’s inside
Just like us
a body a being a work of art
Just like us

Under my thumb
the pot goes round and round
does it know where it is going when
the only way is up
But how tall, how far?
Only the sky above
‘What are we to become?’
they may wonder
particles of soil
once in a past time

I don’t know either, pal
for the thumb has too much fun
and loves the feeling of the clay
in love with its malleable essence
always a tad scared of going too far, pushing too much
Just like us

A thumb’s dance
The clay follows
A vessel comes

Last week I fell in love

It had been a while since the last time I had loved a book so much. I would get in bed as early as possible. 8pm, 9pm. To read. To dive into the words of Elif Shafak. The wisdom of Sufi philosophy and the lives of the poet Rumi and the other characters on this beautiful, moving, inspiring and enlightening book — The Forty Rules of Love.

I was tempted to start reading it again, right after finishing it. Instead, I run to the bookstore to get another one by her ♥︎ Run now, if you can!

The midwife knows that when there is no pain, the way for the baby cannot be opened and the mother cannot give birth. Likewise, for a new Self to be born, hardship is necessary. Just as clay needs to go through intense heat to become strong, Love can only be perfected in pain.

“What is beauty? What is the art of the kiln? The artisan knows nothing of that. Still, without knowing all that there is to know, his[/her] hands continue working swiftly in the process of creation. It is said that the voice chanting for salvation is Buddha himself. In the same way, the hand of the artisan is no longer his or her own hand, but the hand of nature. The crafts[wo]man does not aim to create beauty, but nature assures that it is done.”

Soetsu Yanagi, The Beauty of Everyday Things

Books that I am reading again, books that I probably will never finish. As I come back home after a quiet and productive afternoon at the studio, these pills of wisdom from different books that have recently been, or currently are, in my hands come to mind.

I am really enjoying my days at the studio. My heart, and consequently my time, is shared by lots of things, which means that I go to the studio either for short bursts of time from Monday to Friday, or for long, delicious sessions during the weekend. The weekends… What I thought would be a burden has become the highlight of my week. The studio is quiet, with barely anyone in. A cat comes visit and I am in no rush. My energy is very different and that probably is felt by the clay. I am at peace. As the pots grow bigger than ever and new objects are being born, I find myself in awe of the works, as if I had not made them. An amazing feeling to feel.

I am not very good at documenting the making process. Luckily, I have this series, RI KÖKO, which means to be in a group, alongside others in Bubi. It can be working, studying or learning collectively and it is also used to refer to a studio. I started it earlier this year to have a space for the most intimate parts of my practice, so let’s see what comes out of it this new season of writing, making, sharing and experimenting.

B60.

The 60th piece I have made with Baney Clay, B60 is the biggest of the collection, made differently from its older 59 siblings. The Baney Clay is only at the top, in different percentages, mixed with the main clay, a white stoneware. It is the second attempt at making a larger vessel with a gradient of clays. The first one failed as the areas with a higher amount of Baney Clay cracked even before the bisque firing due to the clays’ different shrinkages. So let’s cross all our fingers and toes, let’s pray to all ceramics gods, for this piece has given me a lot of joy as I have been making it and I hope it gets to experience the post-firings life in one piece. Should cracks arise, may they add beauty and contribute to the piece’s story.

“The work reveals itself as you go.”

Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

“There is a truth in oneself. One must make do with that, and it comes out.”

Etel Adnan, Laure Adler. The Beauty of Light - interviews

“Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead. Begin with an end in mind. Having an end in mind is no guarantee that you’ll reach it, but not having an end in mind is a guarantee that you won’t.”

I came across this today, tonight, while watching 100 Foot Wave. A documentary series about big wave surfing mainly in Nazaré (Portugal) —where the world’s biggest wave is—, though also in other locations as the big wave surfers travel from one spot to another, hungrily, chasing the swell, dreaming of riding the biggest wave of their lives.

In the process they get pounded, terribly injured, some have even passed, swallowed by the sea, by Big Mamma, by Yemayá —a force way too powerful for their bodies which look like small toys as they ride down these giants.

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Since this summer, since the week that I spent in the Mediterranean in Spain, pushing myself to keep overcoming my fear of the sea, swimming further and further each time, I have been watching sea-related documentaries. The Shark Whisperer, Riding Giants, The Endless Summer and now, 100 Foot Wave. Having surfed, I love watching it as I can relate to how they talk about the sea —to a very small degree. I have been pounded by one-and-a-half-meter waves, feared for my life as the waves crashed in my face, and yet, kept going. So I can imagine, while also not being able to imagine it at all, the pain of being pounded by a 30-meter monster. I am glued to the screen. I am there with them and grateful to not be there with them. And as I wonder ‘why do they do that? Why do they risk their lives day after day, falling into depression when there is no swell?’, so do they. They question their lives over and over again and yet, go back into the water. In a way, they have no choice as they know it is their calling.

Today’s episode (episode 3, season 2, titled ‘Jaws’, for those curious enough) was the best so far. As the swell in the Atlantic dies out, a storm arrives in the Pacific and off they go to Hawaii, to Jaws, where tow surfing started. They seek childhood dreams, to redeem injuries and bad experiences, to remember their best memories in the sea. Whatever their reason, they are there.

I think I particularly loved the episode for they all seemed wiser. They knew themselves. They knew when to stop. They had the self-confidence to ride Jaws. Meditation, breathwork, being present and in their bodies instead of in their minds were the recurrent tools that took them to that moment in their lives.

*

A while ago I wrote about my experience and the life lessons I learnt surfing in Dakar. Watching these guys being gladiators —as they say— is taking this whole surfing thing to a whole new philosophical level for me. And through it, Stoicism has returned to my life. When I was a teenager studying philosophy at school, it was the Stoics that spoke to me, albeit for the wrong reasons or rather, due to a misunderstanding. Stoics are thought to be ‘emotionless’ and back then, I loved that. To be impassible, to not be affected by anything, cruising through life without pain. After a re-introduction to Stoicism, taken there as though by the waves through the prayer or meditation that Nicole McNamara reads out loud for her husband, Garrett McNamara, who ‘discovered’ the Nazaré wave, I am understanding what Stoicism actually means and again today, it spoke to me.

Courage, temperance, justice and wisdom. The core values to live a life of virtue. Having a clear vision, a reason to be, learning each day from others, from our teachers, accepting the curveballs that life throws at us, like these surfers accept being pounded and go back out into the sea, ready for their next ride.

As Summer officially ends and I go back to the studio for another season of making, gearing up towards a solo show, the Stoics and the surfers are reminding me to stay focus on my purpose, having eyes on the price, day in and day out; understanding my journey is only mine and that is my compass.

“Plan all the way to the end. When your efforts are not directed at a cause or a purpose, how will you know when to stop, how will you know when you have had enough, when you’ve reached your goal, when you’ve gotten out of track, if you’ve never defined what those things are? The answer is that you cannot. And so you are driven into failure, or worse, into madness —oblivion of directionlessness”.

The Stoics dixit

Some favourite quotes so far. Much to my dismay, all by men…

“We are what we repeatedly do, therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit.”
Aristotle

“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.”
Seneca

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
Marcus Aurelius

While I really want to keep exploring how to use this space as an income stream, there is something about having a class system whereby those with the means get more that I don’t like. I don’t think it is fair and after all, I want to be read by as many people as possible at this point in time.

Paid subscriptions are still on and I’ve included a £3.50 donation per month (Substack’s lowest option) and a £25 annual donation for those who enjoy ‘In the thick of it’ and would like to contribute. At the end of the day, it takes time and time is money. However much you pay, though, everyone will get the same. And let’s see how that goes!

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And now, onto the first post of this season:

Neck ache in New York

In three weeks I have taken eight flights, something I am definitely not proud of. London-Paris-Malabo-Casablanca-Barcelona-New York-Atlanta-New York-London. Holidays and work and all of the above combined. Flora and fauna of all kinds: waterfalls, volcanic soil, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, a delta, flamingos, el morico común, the Sahara from above back and forth, rats big and small, mosquitos galore. Stunning sunrises and sunsets regardless of the latitude of the spot.

The riches of nature can have an overwhelming while also nourishing effect on us. I feel humbled and small, and blessed at the same time. Architecture can also have such an overwhelming effect, making our jaws drop, our eyes unable to blink as everything around us stops. Some spaces and buildings do make me feel humbled, like a church or a mysterious megalith I cannot quite understand how it got to its location during prehistoric times. And then there’s the display of power and money, a manly need to control and show off. Something rather well embodied by the skyscrapers of New York.

Day two in NYC my dad confessed my neck aches. I couldn’t agree more. As the glass buildings keep growing taller and taller, the sun struggles to find its way down into the streets, which makes areas like the Financial District extremely cool during the hot city summers. When I went past a certain feeling of anger and disgust, I started to admire the festival of shadows and reflections that the scene offered and after all I loved it. Here I leave you some snaps and a tune to walk along.

Why was I in the US, you might wonder

If you are thinking that it is not the time to travel to the US, I share the sentiment. It was work that took me there:

• The opening of Body Vessel Clay at Ford Foundation. After two first shows in London and York in 2022, this groundbreaking exhibition toured to NYC. Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art brings together three generations of groundbreaking Black women artists whose work with clay explores the medium’s multilayered cultural and political significance. You can read more about it on this interview with curator Dr Jareh Das.

• In Atlanta, the High Museum of Art opened an African Ceramic Gallery with a focus on women. From vessels from a range of African countries and a demonstration pot by Ladi Kwali, to contemporary makers like Magdalene Odundo, Ranti Bam and Ngozi-Omeje Ezema. A vessel from me, along with a selection of my research videos from my time in Nigeria earlier this year.

In Spain, my generation grew up with the Cuadernos de Vacaciones Santillana. Summer homework notebooks for different topics whose main goal was to keep them brains going, lest all the learnings from the school year disappeared under the sun, were washed away by the sea or simply replaced by wonderful memories of swimming pools, las fiestas of the village or one’s mum’s delicious gazpacho.

Very cleverly, Blackie Books, a very cool independent publishing house from Barcelona, created a new version for adults about 14 years ago. Those are a proper source of joy for the summer holidays. Games to identity country flags, Spanish pop culture quizzes of all kinds and the most random past times. If you are Spanish and didn’t know about this… go get one right now!

As you know, I am taking a break from ‘In the thick of it’. Not precisely because I am going on holidays. That would be nice, but not until the end of August. Simply, because I am forcing myself to take a seasonal, cyclical approach to this. Impose myself some rest and reflection. Create new habits.

In my absence and in the spirit of the Cuadernos de verano, I thought I’d share things I have recently enjoyed or would like to have time to dive into.

I hope you have a lovely summer. I hope you miss ‘In the thick of it’ and I hope I miss it too!

Lots of love,
Bisila x

TO READ

• All Fours, by Miranda July

• How to Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina

• The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

• Las que se atrevieron by Lucía Asué Mbomío Rubio

TO LISTEN TO

• No hay negros en el Tibet podcast (Spanish)

• Aja Monet’s album, when the poems do what they do

• Maxine Pennington’s Alhara Radio shows

• El Bueno y El Malo album by Hermanos Guiterrez, perfect for those summery sunsets or long road trips

TO WATCH

• Dahomey by Mati Diop

• Black Girl by Ousmane Sembene

• Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in conversation

• Chef’s Table episodes with Norma Listman y Saqib Keval + the one with Ángel León

SUBTACKS

• Tender Photo

• Marley E. Dias | THIRD SPACE

• No Plantains Left Behind

• Rick Rubin

And if you recently got here, these are some of my favourite posts from this ‘season’:

• La Belle Vague

• The cycle of clay life

• Riding the flame

• Flor de Sakura

♥︎♥︎

And lastly, this summer’s triathlon fundraiser is still open until the London Triathlon on August 9-10. Donate to Design Can if you can ♥︎ 🏊🏽‍♀️ 🚴🏽‍♀️ 🏃🏽‍♀️

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Some days, I don’t want the day to end. Days that have been intense and beautiful. Full of joy, activity and people. I go to bed and I want more, and also less and, above all, some time to digest. Days like today. A day that started early, at 6am, to head to Eaton —to Dorney Lake—, for a triathlon.

I met women from my team —the charity Women in Tri UK—, random people as we waited in the water to start, or in the transition area, or during the run. Back in London, I was with friends until 8pm. And now, in bed, I felt the need to listen to music with my headphones on. The need to create a cocoon to slow down. A little capsule before dozing off. And all of a sudden I felt so sad. So the songs were carefully chosen to match the mood. The post-event blues.

Rosalia is an artist I admire immensely. With a profound knowledge of music and its history and an amazing voice, she mixes genres, she goes from one thing to the other with incredible skill and extraordinary ease. If you are wondering what the heck I am talking about, please watch this and let yourself be blown away.

She also accompanied me during a very tough time. With one of her songs being some spooky prophesy of what was to come, what I would one day think; while also the voice in my head that was helping me arrive to a decision. Something I only realised in hindsight, as it often happens in life.

And then, there’s Sakura.

La que sabe sabe que si estoy en eso es para romper y si me rompo con esto pues me romperé, y qué. Solo hay riesgo si hay algo que perder.

She who knows, knows that if I’m in this is to break (moulds) and if I break myself because of it, well then I break myself, so what. There’s only risk if there’s something to lose.

I’ve always loved these lyrics though I hadn’t listened to them in a long while.

Scary, inspiring and insightful. I want to feel like this. More, all the time, but lately, I’m overthinking things a lot. Professionally, personally. What does this mean? Is this what I really want? Can I afford this? What if I say this or that? What if I share how I truly feel?

The fire I feel when I race, the fire I believe I naturally am, is sometimes threatened and feels so fragile. Or I fear my fire will burn others and so I turn the heat down. And this, I’ve learnt, makes me sad.

¿Por qué será? ¿Por qué será?

Las llamas son bonitas
porque no tienen orden
y el fuego es bonito
porque todo lo rompe.

Flames are beautiful
because they have no order
And fire is beautiful
because, by it, everything is broken

Today, when I got in the water I was extremely nervous. Will I be able to do it?
Last night, in bed, I thought, why do I do this? And then the gun went off, and I started swimming and the fire was alight and all went silent. And as I breathed, I knew I could do it, wanted to do it, love to do it.

If this doesn’t make sense, at least you can enjoy Rosalia’s stunning voice.

If you get me, I see you — we got this.

By accepting self-doubt, rather than trying to eliminate or process it, we lessen its energy and interference.
Rick Robin, “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”

The ‘inner me’ I try to channel every morning

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To everything, turn, turn, turn / There is a season, turn, turn, turn /
And a time to every purpose under heaven

I have decided that, very much in the spirit of some big learnings around the seasons and leadership from last year, I am taking a break from Substack over the summer.

I started In the thick of it in September 2024 and it’s been a wonderful space to explore my creativity, mainly through writing but not exclusively, all these months. Plus, it was an excellent companion during my time in West Africa and so has become an archive of all those experiences and my return to London.

After about 11 months of weekly mind wanderings, I am taking a break at the end of July to pause and reflect. I will be back in September with more stories, inspiration and reflections.

I hope this also gives you all a respite and probably the time to catch up with some old posts.

One more post next week and then I’m off. Thank you so much for reading! ♥︎

Are you using your power?

And don’t forget you can do your bit to contribute to making the design industry more representative of the world that it serves by supporting the campaign and resource platform Design Can with a donation —however big, however small— to the fundraising campaign my brother and I are running this summer.

Gracias!! 🏊🏽‍♀️ 🚴🏽‍♀️ 🏃🏽‍♀️

Texture that invites the touch.
Texture that gives movement and emotion.
Texture that makes me wonder about the maker, their hands, their communities.
Texture that can make a work’s origin identifiable.

I had been a bit stuck in my search for texture and pattern decoration for an object I’m making. I didn’t want to look at things for I want to keep my ideas on check as I am in the process of making a lot of work. But boy, did I need to look at things. To travel again, albeit through books. To touch beautiful objects and be in their presence.

An afternoon at Seed was all I needed. The joy of looking at and talking about objects.

Here I leave you a selection of some of the things that spoke to me.

And to accompany it all, some thoughts on collecting books, sharing and community by Christian Cassiel —the wonderful man behind this small library full of energy, beauty and inspiration that also functions as a community space in Tottenham:

The most beautiful moments in Seed are when people talk and share ideas within the space. Recently I’ve been reflecting upon a quote from the late Koyo Kouoh, which is that ‘people are more important than things’. The value lies not in the object or book, but what they teach us about ourselves and each other.

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My favourite books from my first visit to Seed:

And speaking of community…

If I had a personal tagline it would be ‘never not fundraising’. I cannot help it. So this summer, along with my brother, I am raising funds for Design Can.

Design Can is a campaign, community and resource platform calling for the design industry to be representative of the world it serves. I used to work at DC for a couple years and I now am part of the Steering Committee. I love DC for the fantastic work that it does in changing perceptions of both the traditional gatekeepers and the creative community, bringing down barriers and increasing access.

Plus, on a personal level, thanks to DC not only have I grown professionally, but also built a wonderful community of peers.

You can donate here! ♥︎ 🏊🏽‍♀️ 🚴🏽‍♀️ 🏃🏽‍♀️

My brother Arturo and I at the London Triathlon last summer when we both finished first of our categories! 🥇