On Unity, Humankind and Clay
by Bisila Noha
Portrait of Bisila Noha: Photograph by Ida Riveros
Baney Clay: An Unearthed Identity is a project I had been wanting to embark on for a long while. It is the result of a decade’s questioning - and still on-going. Questioning who I really am as a mixed-raced Spanish person whose Spanishness has always been questioned. A lifetime of searching for ‘home’, a concept I discovered through clay was beyond physical borders or places of origin. The result of years challenging and re-thinking the role of women in our society.
Up until now, I had refused to mix my ceramics practise with my feminist activism. I had always thought keeping the clay feminism-free was allowing me to have a break from it and to separate these two realms of my life.
For the last two years, I had been reading and researching about women and ceramics along with fellow ceramics artist, Veronica Restrepo, for a tour she had designed at the Ceramics Rooms in the Victoria & Albert Museum for Lon-art Creative, the arts organisation I co-direct. Moreover, I have been lucky enough to meet and spend time with women potters in Mexico and Morocco, whose identity would not be complete without their clay; from whom I learnt much more than pottery.
So what is the relationship between women and ceramics? It is just like anything else, really.
Pottery, beginning as a predominantly female practise, was taken over by men when the wheel was invented, creating a divide in the pottery world. The pots made by women, within their homes, are just for that, for the home and therefore lack any artistic value; while the pots made my men are better, a sign of development and innovation, and worth of being considered ‘art’. Fast-forward to the Industrialisation, men ran the factories and gained fame, whilst women, depending on their class, either made the pots in the factories, in vast numbers yet nameless, or bought the wares and enjoyed them at their tea parties.
It will be in the second half of the 20th Century that women ceramic artists start reclaiming both the wheel and the value of hand-building, led by Lucie Rie, Ruth Duckworth and Allison Briton.
So it was naive of me to think that I could continue keeping my practise feminism-free. Once we put on the gender lens and start challenging our reality from a gender perspective, everything becomes political, because everything is. And so has happened with my work.
I love the fact that pottery, as a craft that has been with humans globally since forever, is like a clay diary of how humans have evolved; our struggles and achievements. It goes hand-in-hand with who we are, both the positive and the negative.
With the Baney Clay: An Unearthed Identity project I wanted to tap into that power of clay. To seize the opportunity of my being a mixed-race woman always in between worlds, now in a Northern country with clay from the South, to challenge the norm, build bridges and encourage a conversation.
And challenging it was.
Womb Vessel. D3 - 50% Draycott + 50% Baney Clay. Thrown Bottom & Coiled Top.
It has been a challenge because I have exposed myself and shared my own personal journey. It has been a challenge because I was using a clay that I had a limited amount of and knew very little about. Plus, I was mixing it with other clay bodies. I was also mixing techniques, throwing and hand-building, which I had never done before and with not that much experience as a hand-builder.
I believe in the power of mixing; of uniting. And that was my mission.
Baney Clay: An Unearthed Identity
As I said on the collection statement, ‘I strongly believe that progress will only come when patriarchy is over and so Men and Women collaborate and are empathetic as to each other’s experiences; when colonialist and Western-centric views on pretty much everything are a thing of the past and the North and the South are one; when the South stops being ‘the back yard’ of Western countries.’ And thus, I brought all these concepts together on the project, through clay.
Firstly, I will explain that the name I have given to the clay and the project, Baney, is the name of my dad’s home village in Equatorial Guinea (EG). It is located in the Bioko Norte Province of Bioko, the largest island in EG where the capital Malabo is, and has a population of 2,365 as per their 2005 census. A couple of years ago, my parents brought me a bag of clay from Baney they had dug themselves, for which I hadn’t had time yet. This year I decided to put everything on hold in order to dedicate some time to this clay and to myself.
The Baney pieces are made with different mixtures of Draycott (Stoneware) or Porcelain and my Baney clay, it being an allegory of the South and Women.
B3 - 90% Porcelain + 10% Baney Clay Refined
My input to this project - my ideas and ideals, my experience - were metaphors of how I see the world and how I would like it to be. The output - the actual final pieces - are a perfect metaphor of how the world actually is. A mix of roughness and kindness; a beautiful pallet of colours all sharing some underlying principles and birthmarks; a world of tensions, conflicts and cracks.
Porcelain is considered the purest clay - all white and without contamination of any other minerals - and the most desired one in the North. When I mixed it with the Baney clay in an equal proportion (50% porcelain + 50% Baney clay) and fired it to 1260℃, the iron, present in a very high percentage, felt trapped and wanted to leave, creating a bloating effect on the surface (see B9 vessel). A perfect metaphor of how still today the North can handle the South and even mix with it, but just to a certain degree. Likewise, when I didn’t process or refine the Baney clay much and used it grogged or very sandy, the surface would be rough, the Baney clay very visible and full of personality in a way (see B3 and B12 vessels) and in some cases, especially when mixing it with porcelain, the pieces would crack terribly not making it to the first firing. Another beautiful allegory of how for the mix to work, the South needs to be made palatable for the North to be able to assimilate it.
B12 Vessel - Mix of Porcelain, Baney Clay & Molochite - Leftovers From a Collapsed Larger Piece.
B9 Vessel - 50% Porcelain + 50% Baney Clay
The ultimate ‘clash of civilisations’ one can translate into ceramics is cracks. And cracks there were. Even the most unexpected ones, like a crack I had on the Womb Vessel (see B6 Womb Vessel). This piece was made out of a bottom wheel-thrown piece (originally a bowl) and coiled top. I had never had a crack on the surface of a ‘bowl' and yet there it was. A statement of the tensions and conflicts present on the piece.
Cracks devalue the worth of a piece. However, in this project cracks are an essential part of it. And so it should be in life, with humans. Our cracks, impurities and internal tensions define who we are and until we recognise and face them we won’t be able to overcome them and accept those of the others and successfully mix. Until then, progress will have to wait.
Beyond the political and sociological metaphors, this project has also been a key moment in my journey to connect with my roots and my blackness. I am half Spanish and half Equatorial Guinean, but as I grew up those two halves weren’t balanced. I was rather detached from my African roots and, consequently, from my blackness. And so I grew up thinking I was as white as the rest of the kids at my school; no different.
The awakening of my blackness has been marked by three key events in my life: the first time we all - my parents and my siblings - went to Equatorial Guinea (EG) (which was the first time my dad returned in 30 years) in 2010; when I read ‘Women, Race and Class’ by Angela Y. Davis in 2016, which then pushed me to be more informed about black feminism in the UK; and this project.
The same way African pots are used in ceremonies to connect with ancestors, these pieces are to me a direct connection to mine and my past. An homage to my now united two halves.
Front: Two-Legged Vessel. D3. 50% Draycott + 50% Baney Clay. Thrown Legs & Coiled Body.
Back: Two-Legged Draycott Prototype Vessel.