Wisdom in the Hands of Maestras: Exploring Ancestral Clay Practice

A language that transcends borders and travels through time, haptic expression makes us who we are. Terra is a research organisation founded by visual artist Corinne Aivazian, with roots in Mexico, Armenia and France, exploring ancestral clay practice to connect histories and peoples. Here she shares lessons from local Maestras and artisans that come from the earth, learned by the hands.

Written by Reeme Idris, photos by Diego Flores Manzanedo

Moving between philosophy and anatomy, motor and cognitive, to learn more about what is haptic might be a lesson in of itself; to focus on the hand is to dissolve habits of thought that create boundaries between body, mind, and the world. It is our hands that allow us to engage socially, to participate in cultural events; with hands, we leave traces of our activity – good or bad – that outlast our physical existence. Our capacity for creative work, which goes backwards in time to early primate life, sees movement, thought, and feeling fuse to make real our inner life – an inimitably human experience.

The notion of aesthetic touch acknowledges that while the hand is indeed functional – manipulating things and wielding tools – the hand can be receptive and inquiring, generating meaning throughout the body much different, more intimate in comparison to the speed and distance with which we use our eyes. What separates ceramics from many other arts are feel and function; pots are made for proximity, to be held, turned over in the hand and clasped between fingers as they are used. Handled with sensitivity, they can share a vitality in their form that might be less for our minds to understand and more for our souls to be open to. 

Corinne Aivazian is the founder of clay-based research practice Terra in Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico, as well as artist residency Maison Salvadore in Montmorillion, France. Terra offers ateliers and programs with site-specific knowledge to develop the senses of makers and thinkers who come to listen to what they can learn from clay, themselves and local Maestras (maestra: feminine noun, a title of respect, meaning teacher or master).

Currently, in Oaxaca with her partner, Mexican documentary filmmaker and photographer Diego Flores Manzanedo, Corinne herself focuses on ancestral clay practice to revive lost ceramic traditions in her home country Armenia, where she intends to build a ceramics centre and women’s pottery cooperative. Much of her work with clay, as well as her filmmaking and poetry, explores the complexities of the relationship between the diaspora and their ethnic homelands. A parallel of pre-colonial histories sharing the first industry of the first peoples has helped Corinne build trust with artisans across three clay communities: Santa Maria Atzompa, Barro Negro, and Barro Rojo.

During our past conversations about Mexico (while Corinne was creating Maison Salvadore in France) and about Armenia (whilst in Oaxaca developing Terra), it becomes clear that borders blend and meld for her through each haptic discovery. “To explore the memory of the land as a means for connecting the rise and fall of empires, to make sense of contrasting historical accounts, as well as complex personal identities,” she explains, is what links her projects and places.

Reeme: Regarding ancestral practice, how far back has Terra’s research taken you so far?  

Corinne: Terra was born out of looking at the first human clay creations, understanding their place and functions. So I would say in terms of a timeline, our research starts at the beginning. When I was researching in Armenia several years ago, I would spend days in the History Museum in Yerevan, staring at ancient pots and trying to get my head around just how sophisticated they were.

The first clay pieces in historical Armenia were vessels, created as functional pieces to hold water and grain but they were first and foremost representations of the mother goddess. This has been the research focus of my work for the past few years. These early pieces are fascinating because they were constructed by hand from top to bottom (the opposite of how most pots are put together), and this was a way of replicating the three-part structure of the universe, as it was understood at that time. The upper level was the heavenly realm, where it was believed all water was stored, the middle was the solar and stellar sky, and the bottom was the earth and the soil. 

So, the makers of these pots were using their hands to make physical representations of their cosmo-vision, but also representations of the body, the mother. This way of seeing vessels as bodies has endured this whole time and is evident in our language as we still refer to the lip or foot of a pot.

Reeme: Is it possible to share wisdom, gained from the spiritual and regional aspects of a craft, virtually? 

Corinne: The clay a person works with, which is unique to a site and a location, should be accompanied by all of the traditions and practices – ways of learning and ways of working with that clay – that are entrusted to the people that live there. One of the things that we notice here (in Oaxaca) is that places can be close together but have very different clays and very different ways of working. Places twenty kilometres apart can produce quite different results; in some communities, people have strong traditional customs, languages, and practices while other places have adapted more to contemporary society. 

We’ve been thinking about how we share what we do more digitally, even before the (coronavirus) outbreak. It was something that we needed to do, but are not sure how to – we’ve had quite a lot of concerns and hiccups with sharing within the digital realm, particularly the work we do in Mexico. I have shied away from it; we feel quite strongly that we will never do anything like share videos online of how people make things specifically.

It has much to do with observing somebody else’s hands whilst at the same time working with your own; it’s that duel learning that happens whilst you’re watching someone next to you. I suppose that could be translated to a digital screen but we feel that by the time you get to that point, you’ve already experienced a sort of sensual and visceral overload, connected with how that particular item lives and works, and the context of the environment. We’re concerned with traditional practice and we’ve always promoted learning by doing, self-taught through discovery and haptic skill. Therefore, I don’t feel there’s any place for us to promote digital learning of that kind. 

I do think there is an interesting opportunity for storytelling: more of the contextual information, more of the background to how people live, why they work with clay, and of those communities. Which is what we’re trying to do with Terra Stories (an upcoming podcast by Terra) by looking at the way that clay history is written – especially now that traditional practice is so popular – it’s a chance to reposition that historical arc as well. It’s often that we see a fusing of traditions taken from places like Japan or China with the West (and usually shared via a white, male, privileged perspective) whereas, in Mexico and Armenia, there exists an alternative timeline for the evolution of clay practice.

Reeme: Can the language of hands be passed on without hands at all?

Corinne: I think that most Maestras would say no. At Terra, we support two different ways of learning. One is, the hands giving to another set of the hands, ancestral hands, who have learned from somebody else usually in that community that works with clay and not always familial. That’s one of the lovely things about clay specifically in Oaxaca; there is a lot of recuperating of and recovering of skills and traditions.

Most potters here will say that their first contact with clay is usually in the womb. You know, they grow up with their mothers having it, and as young children, they play with clay, they discover it and stick their fingers in it. In early childhood, they will choose to make toys or little animals. By the time they are eight, they start to learn something that’s being made in the household, something that would be to sell. From there on, it’s like a journey of perfecting. 

So, one way that Terra supports is (in respect of a lineage) this idea of the ancestral arts and gifting to another maker or another person. The other way is – similarly at Salvadore – learning by doing. Rather than regimented processes or courses, being led by the clay and what it tells you. Clays are so different; they require such different things. We see our role more as a facilitator, to present the tools and resources to support somebody on their journey, so their own hands can learn. The hands of a master artisan, let’s say, can certainly pass on to the hands of another, but I also think that clay can be the teacher, clay can teach the hands.

All that the hands of the new maker needs – or the maker who wants to explore traditional practice – is some guidance on listening to the clay. I guess that’s one of the stumbling blocks for people who’ve learnt in group studios, or they’ve learned the processes that many hobby potters or studio potters now use, which are, in a way, domestic versions of industry pottery – synthetic glazes, kilns that guarantee the way something comes out. Those things can disturb our intuition, so the other way we support is to help people understand how to listen to the clay a bit more. 

A big part of that is to look at where it comes from. Is it mountain clay? Is it riverbed clay? Look at how hard it is for the artisan who preps it. Your hands can certainly learn how to work with the clay without anything being directly passed to you. I think it’s fair to say that most of the Maestras we work with would consider the knowledge their hands have as a birthright. They’re happy to share because I think they feel, for anybody who’s an outsider – even if they learn to work with their clay in the same way that they do – it would never quite be the same. After all, they’re not from that community or from that place. They’re encouraging of people finding their own way. 

We support this idea of the language of the hands being gifted from one set of hands to another. But we also support the idea of the hands accessing that knowledge, learning that knowledge through listening to the clay and where it comes from. 

Clay is protected under community law across the state of Oaxaca. The collection of it is administered by designated community leaders who control its distribution, making clay almost non-accessible to outsiders. It becomes available when an artisan is willing to share a portion of their quota. In Atzompa, a community that has worked with clay for at least 2000 years, a green glaze is seen by many as an influence of Spanish conquistadors, “I was there when they were excavating the ancestral kilns at the archaeological site, and I can tell you, the pieces that came out were red, black and orange … not green!” as one artisan told them. The family potteries Corinne favours in Atzompa have worked hard to reclaim ancestral practice, generously sharing how they operate now and how this fits into their ancestral cosmology.   

It becomes clear how precious access to traditional techniques at the hands of their Maestras is. For most of the artisans who have not taught before, demonstrations were previously only for the purpose of making sales. But for those who visit with Terra (who mix their own clay, as a Maestra describes it), they have a chance to imbue it with their own essence.

From recent exchanges with Maestras as told by Corinne:

Maestra Valentina, San Marcos Tlapazola: “For our wedding in Armenia, we commissioned one of the last remaining clay artisans to make some traditional wine cups as gifts for the guests. We brought a pair back as a gift for Maestra Valentina and Don Luis. I remember so vividly how she used her hands as a way to try and understand them. Tracing the surface with her fingertips, weighing them in her palms. She made a series of statements, “… these are very light, very fine, very different”. She didn’t ask questions, her hands had already given her all the information she needed. 

More than anyone else I know, Valentina uses her hands as her primary method for navigating the world. In the winter, she only works with clay on alternative days because she says when her hands get too cold, she catches the flu. When Don Luis was working illegally in the US and she suffered terribly with depression and espanto (an ancient concept roughly translated as “the fear”) her hands went limp and she wouldn’t work. 

Her hands are the junction between her subconscious and her physical world. They are the hands that summon the fire (as her ancestors’ hands have done for centuries), that tell her when the clay is ready to undergo its next transformation, that have enabled her to pull a perfect form out of a course – a rough lump of wet earth with the speed and grace that a magician may pull a rabbit out of a hat – since she was a small child.”

The Enriquez Sisters, Atzompa: “The notion of the artist’s hand is an enduring one. Perhaps as though vague, it’s the best way we have to articulate the feeling that something in the object or the piece was made by a particular artist. Somehow, without knowing anything about the person who made it, there are these physical signatures that might be anything from stylistic to spiritual, left by the hands of its creator. These marks and gestures begin to tell stories, and sometimes it feels as if they were speaking to you directly ... this is how we met the Enriquez Sisters. 

Diego and I were wandering around the Mercardo de Artesanías in Santa María Atzompa as we had many times before. When we huddled over a corner shelf, we noticed a cluster of extraordinary masks and figurines. Eventually, we found ourselves at the home of their creators. We were greeted by Chonita and her younger sister Laura Elvia who, just before we arrived, had been sitting on the floor working on three-meter-wide clay pigs under the watchful eye of their elderly, Abuelita.

Chonita delivered a strong handshake. Her hands were one of the first things I noticed about her because I remember thinking they looked a lot like mine. Hands you would describe more as dependable than elegant, feeling her clasp full of strength, and lines full of histories. Laura Elvia’s hands were slender and what my grandmother would have called lady-like, the kind that you imagine capable of fine work. As they sat on their mats, grabbing at the pile of clay on the floor in rhythmic alternation, and spun their wheels in silence (almost in unison), it was clear why these hands had worked so well together for more than 30 years.”

Maestra Magali, San Bartolo Coyotepec: “My hands are colder than yours,” she said as if it was the most obvious explanation in the world for why her pot was perfectly spherical and the one, made by one of our residents, resembled something closer to a rotten pumpkin. He stared at her a little bemused. “My hands work with clay every day, so they stay colder, and because they are colder the clay stays fresher, more humid, it doesn’t dry out as quickly or crumble … that and I have been working with this clay every day for 20 years”, she giggled.

Barro Negro is silky and soft, but it’s also fussy; Magali’s hands move around it fast, in cyclical and repetitive motions that make it seem like the vessels forming themselves, dancing out of the clay with her hands simply tracing the movements, but it wasn’t always this way. Magali didn’t learn from her parents or even her husband’s parents. She learned from his grandmother who was one of the last left who knew many of the ancestral techniques. She is always rather modest about it but it’s clear that if she hadn’t taken the time to learn from her grandmother-in-law and effectively revive dying traditions, the linage would have been lost. Instead, she set up a studio where all of her brothers and sisters now work, and hosts young apprentices.”

To find out more about Terra, visit their website, Instagram, and the Instagram of Corinne Aivazian.

References:

Bronner, Simon J. “The Haptic Experience of Culture” Anthropos, 1982 vol. 77, no. 3/4.

Driscoll, Rosalyn “Postscript: Rehabilitating the Hand: Reflections of a Haptic Artist” edited by Radman, Zdravko, The Hand, an Organ of the Mind, What the Manual Tells the Mental, 2013, MIT Press Books.

Wilson, Frank R. The Hand, How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture, 1998, Vintage Books.