reclaiming
2025 | | ACT Valais
Reclaiming has a political meaning, but it is also used as ‘to recycle’, sometimes more specifically in the clay recycling process. As long as it has not been fired, clay that is more or less dry can be reconditioned for future shaping. During this process, when it has been sufficiently rehydrated and has reached the optimum moisture level, the clay is agglomerated and then tapped on a flat surface to expel the air inside and form a dense, homogenous loaf. This work requires great vigour and energetic gestures. Dry, brutal, aggressive, even violent if I let myself get carried away by this force that I find difficult to express in any other way. Our anger.
Often my anger gets tangled up in a chaos of thoughts and ends in a crying fit or panic attack. I shake, I hyperventilate. My soft tissues and bones are desperate to burst out from under my skin, while everything beyond that limit tries ferociously to get into my pores. I want to scream but my scream is mute. So hitting the ground is a way of channelling that energy, ensuring that it’s not wasted, that it produces something other than an empty, despondent, inert feeling, but the possibility of another way out. Laterrea has many stories and emotions in its past, but the gesture doesn’t erase them but leaves room for new stories to be told. The idea is not to transfer your anger to the material but, through it, to live your anger in order to heal and move forward.