Ayla Tavares
Ayla Tavares (Brazil, b. 1990) investigates archaeology, architecture, and the objects we encounter in daily life. Connecting them with different layers of time, she reflects on how material carry memory and shape the everyday life. Attentive to the affections, tensions, and possibilities that things embody, Tavares explores materiality in its entanglements. Her practice generates constellations of objects reordered into new arrangements, forming propositional bodies that open space for new narratives and chimeras.
She participated in the Biennale of Contemporary Keramics Rhodes, Greece (2026), the Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2026) and the Jingdezhen International Ceramic Art Biennale, Jingdezhen, China (2023).
Solo exhibitions have been held at Hatch Gallery, Paris (2025); Galeria Athena, Rio de Janeiro (2024); LAMB Gallery, London (2024); Casa Museu Eva Klabin, Rio de Janeiro (2023); Collegium, Arévalo, Spain (2022); and Centro Cultural Light, Rio de Janeiro (2019). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Hammer Museum (2026); Galerist, Istanbul (2025); Instituto Inclusartiz, Rio de Janeiro (2025); Galeria Athena, São Paulo (2024); Casa de la Moneda, Segovia, Spain (2024); Collegium, Arévalo, Spain (2023); Espaço Jacarandá, Rio de Janeiro (2023); and Centro Municipal de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro (2020).
Planta no Centro de um Planeta (from the Materia Materia series), 2025
Clay
34 x 37 x 10 cm | 13.4 × 14.6 × 3.9 in
In the Matéria Matéria series, wall pieces, roughly the size of open palms, unravel a broad thread of possible narratives through clay. Between ceramic reliefs and frames containing graphite drawings, these works condense and reflect a series of catalogued representations of phenomena that are imperceptible to the human scale—whether because of their temporal or physical dimensions. They range from archaeological artifacts to scientific diagrams, schematic drawings, and representations drawn from popular culture: a sun the size of a hand, the choreography inscribed by the movement of mountains, the most distant newly discovered star, the movement of the tectonic plates, a coral, the oceanic ridge.
Part of the Matéria Matéria series, Planta no Centro de um Planeta brings together clay reliefs and graphite drawings inspired by scientific diagrams and seismographic recordings. The work explores phenomena that remain beyond direct human perception, translating the inaccessible depths of the Earth into forms that can be apprehended at the scale of the body.
Approximately 70% the size of the Moon and reaching temperatures of up to 5,400 degrees Celsius, the Earth’s core remains remote and mysterious. Since it cannot be directly observed, knowledge of its interior is constructed through indirect traces, including the movement and form of seismic waves. In the work, these invisible geological processes become layers of clay and graphite, bringing planetary scale and time into the intimate dimension of the hand.
