Ana Guedes

The environmental entanglements of colonialism and climate change are an important focus of Ana Guedes’ practice. At EKWC she worked on ceramic resonators, panels coated with pigmented porcelain to conduct a composition she made using records from the family archive. One set of resonators is based on fragments of a 3D photogrammetric reconstruction of the cargo ship Karl Marx that was stranded off the Angolan coast. Its rusting hull testifies to the country’s turbulent past and to the breakdown of unsustainable economic systems. Another set of resonators, moulded from 3D mappings of the ocean floor, is shown with porcelain impressions of the Portuguese man o’ war, a poisonous organism drifting on the ocean surface that was named after a European naval vessel from colonial time. Together they evoke an unfathomable body of water, the tides, the winds and currents, or perhaps the forces of history sweeping us along…

During her residency, the artist tested various clay bodies for optimal sound conductivity and for this piece, the material research on the combination of earth-wear and Bone China porcelain glazing was developed in collaboration with fellow EKWC resident Reihan Ebrahimi.