Cabo Verde

The work in primary school of Trás di Munti consists of two symbolic themes, relating to life in this village and Cape Verde in general. The first theme of the archipelago, was developed for my next project in Cova da Moura, the neighborhood of immigrants in Lisbon, which in structure and form is also called an island. It can be said that Cova is one more island of the Cape Verde archipelago. But it's families, people also symbolically live in a personal island, which works on its own, but is in a relationship with the rest of the world, with the other islands.
So my work is to study of these relationships with school children. Each child drew a picture of her/his own island. This imaginary island includes mountains, houses, sometimes family members, animals, etc. Then, through these images, we created a map of an archipelago of Trás di Munti, in a two-dimensional form, as a mural on the school wall.
Exploring the traditional techniques of the village pottery, a tri-dimensional form of the map was created. Several groups of children created their own island using local clay. At the end the parts were installed in the yard of CAO Arts Center, with paper boats to make connections between these personal lands. The final result is a motion animation of the movement and life on islands and between them.
The second theme is linked to the work of women in pottery. Almost all the work in the village is made with hands, often with a great physical effort. My intention is to pay homage to the hands of women through a mural on CAO, Centro de Artes e Oficios de Tras di Munti. On the painting, around a drawing of hands of Saturnina (one of the local ceramists), children made their own drawings / paintings of different elements that are being used, touched and made by these women.