Bisila Noha is an art activist who creates distinctive ceramics –
From wheel-thrown pieces, with the addition of marbled slip decoration, to eye-catching abstract landscapes; to sculptural pieces mixing throwing, coiling and carving.
This summer, Noha’s ceramics are being displayed at York Art Gallery as part of their new Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art exhibition. Conceived by Dr Jareh Das, the exhibition spans 70 years of ceramics and explores artworks by three generations of Black women artists working with clay – from Nigerian pioneer potter Lady Kwali and her contemporaries, to international contemporary artists including Bisila Noha, Vivian Chinasa Ezhuga, Dame Magdalene Odundo, Jade Montserrat, Julia Phillips, Phoebe Collings-James and Shawanda Corbett.
Alongside the exhibition a series of family workshops called Plasticine Dreams have been developed by Enorê and Bisila Noha, commissioned & produced by Mediale as part of the Mediale: Summer 2022 Events in York programme, supported by an Events & Festivals Grant from Make it York. Supported by XR Stories.
TBB spoke to Bisila to find out more about her process as a ceramicist and what it means to have her work included in the Body Vessel Clay exhibition …
Please introduce yourself.
My name is Bisila Noha and I am a Spanish London-based ceramicist.
With my work I aim to challenge Western views on art and craft; to question what we understand as productive and worthy in capitalist societies, and to reflect upon the idea of home and oneness pulling from personal experiences in different pottery communities.
Alongside my creative practice, I am a driven activist and advocate, serving as co-director for Lon-art Creative, a collaborative platform for the exploration of social issues through arts, as well as taking leading roles with diversity-in-design campaign Design Can and London’s newly opened LGBTQ+ community centre; and serving as a trustee for brain-injury support charity Headway East London.
Please share a word or sentence which best describes your life right now.
A fun melange of projects that keep my brain buzzing and my heart content.
How did you get into ceramics?
In 2013, I moved to London. While I was working full-time, I started going to pottery classes and enrolled in a studio that I went to on the weekends. Three years later, I got to this point where I was like “I hate this job” and wanted to leave London for a bit – after leaving my hometown when I was eighteen, I’d been moving around a lot, so three years in London, I was like “I need to go away! I need a break from this!” But, I don’t like travelling just for the sake of travelling – I love spending time in a place and getting to know the culture, and so pottery was the perfect excuse. I started off with a residency in Italy, which was great because it was actually when I really learnt how to make pottery. I was throwing 6 days a week, 8 hours a day, and I learnt a lot about the chemistry of clay. It was amazing! So, I went away for half a year because I needed it and wanted to learn more. I never thought I was going to make it in ceramics!
Were you working as an artist before working with ceramics?
No, I didn’t study art officially. I’ve been learning my own way. I actually studied translation, which I do consider to be very creative, and when I was in London, I was working in the translation industry for an advertising agency.
Even though you haven’t necessarily worked with other media, is there something special about working with clay?
Yeah, definitely. Being in contact with earth, the soil, has a very grounding power. It’s that basic. To be in touch and in synch with the land, the soil, and the earth is to be in touch with that which sustains us all. It feels very humbling to know that it’s a practice that has been done forever. I have found a family or a sense of belonging through clay – through all the women I’ve met and learnt from. I feel that in the Body Vessel Clay exhibition – I almost cried when I saw my work exhibited beside that of Lady Kwali and Magdalene Odundo!
For my first solo show in October, I’ve been using other materials – plaster, wax, metal and wood – and I’ve realised that the reason why I like clay, plaster and wax is because of the direct connection I get between my hands and the material. I don’t need a needle to sew or hammer, instead, I’m in direct conversation with the material. I feel that makes it easier for me to dump my thoughts and emotions onto the material.
Can you trace the different aspects of your craft back to particular skills you learned in Italy, Madrid, Mexico or beyond?
I learned hand-building from the women I met in Mexico and Morocco. But, the funny thing is – as with so many things – they do the same things! They might use a different material, but the essence is always the same, which I also find very interesting.
The thing I also learned on my first trip to Mexico was the relationship with the material. When I learnt pottery in studios in London, I was given a bag of clay – it was industrial and I didn’t know where the clay came from – and didn’t learn anything about the history of pottery. But, when I was in Mexico, I was seeing and engaging with women who have learnt from their families, who go and get the clay and process it. Their identity is their craft and they have some tremendous respect for their environment and their material. The work is seasonal and very community-oriented. While I learnt technical skills in Mexico, the most special thing was to learn about these women – who they are and what pottery means to them, their families and their villages.
The Body, Vessel, Clay exhibition starts by exploring the work of Ladi Kwali – particularly how she fused Gwari pottery traditions with European studio pottery techniques. Have you ever found yourself reconciling these juxtaposing pottery traditions in your own work?
I’m always in between a lot of things – I’m mixed race, in between races, in between cultures, I’m neither black nor white; I’m a foreigner when I’m not in Spain, and even in Spain people think I’m a foreigner; I’m queer; I’m always coming and going. And, I think that is where the magic is. I think that is very latent in my work – bringing things together and exploring the richness that comes with that. We live in a world where fluidity is often punished – we need to be either this or that, someone is against the other. I’m interested in mixing to challenge the system and encourage conversations.
I literally explored this in my previous collection, the Baney clay project, in which I explored the tension caused by mixing porcelain and clay from Equatorial Guinea, which reflects the tension between the North and the South. In my current work, I also mix what is maybe pottery with what will be a sculpture, which challenges this divide between art that is worthy of a museum and pottery that nobody cares about.
A great example of that is your two-legged vessels. What’s the story behind those?
So, I was working on a project and I wanted to have one or two statement pieces. I started researching the pottery history of Equatorial Guinea for inspiration, but couldn’t find any information, so I expanded my search to the rest of Africa and found the shape of the two-legged vessel. I thought it was perfect – it represented my two sides coming together into something new! At that point, I couldn’t link a specific ceramicist to the shape – often African pottery history is recorded without names and all that is recorded is the particular tribe or area or Africa that the pottery originates from.
But, then, six months later, I’m brainstorming my next piece, looking through the same pictures and books I looked through before, and I do some more googling and find the two-legged vessel on Sotheby’s and there was Kouame Kakaha’s name on it! I’m like, “Fuck my life! I made this thing without doing the proper research and I’ve created this monster! I was so upset!”
But, the thing is, all Sotheby’s had was Kouame’s name, her village and the date she might have been born – no information about who she actually was. I mean there’s so much to unpack from the fact that her work has been sold for so much money, it’s in museums in the UK and US, and yet I cannot find a single thing about her life story.
But, in a bid to turn this whole thing into something that is good for everyone, my friend points out that I have an amazing opportunity to find Kouame Kakaha. I started talking about this on Instagram and a curator at the Middlesborough Institute pointed me to a book with a page about Kouame, telling the story of how she was creating pottery in her village on the Ivory Coast. It’s funny because, in the book, it talks about how people said the vessel looked like a woman – I never looked at it that way, but I’ve since learned that the shape actually represents ram’s testicles! After that, I got in touch with the ex-wife of the author of the book and found out that this couple collected a lot of Kouame’s work and actually adopted her son, who I’ve been trying to get in contact with. I’ve recently been contacted by a gallery in the Ivory Coast, so the hope is that next year I’ll go to Kouame’s village and then it’ll be much easier to learn more about her.
I loved the Body Vessel Clay exhibition, but wished it would’ve been longer! Related to this, do you think the work of Black female ceramicists gets the recognition it deserves? Does this exhibition mark a turning point in beginning to recognise the work of Black female ceramicists?
Definitely. I hope this exhibition will be remembered in the history of British ceramics because there has never been anything like this before. There are so many levels to it: it’s women, and then Black women. Especially, putting Ladi Kwali at the forefront beyond the context of Michael Cardew’s project, which is how she’d been looked at before. And, then, also the way that Phoebe, Shawanda, Chinasa, Jade and Julia are using clay in a very experimental, contemporary way when clay tends to just be seen as pottery. I think that at the moment there’s a change in the pottery world, where ceramics are getting more and more attention, and this show has brought it all together amazingly. All the major newspapers – the Financial Times, the Guardian – covered the show and it was seen by like fifty or sixty thousand people, so I think it’s going to be remembered, and it’s definitely changing something.
To support the Body, Vessel, Clay exhibition, you have worked with international media arts agency Mediale to develop a series of family workshops called ‘Plasticine Dreams’. What’s it been like developing these workshops?
I’ve been working with the artist Enorê, who is running the workshop, and offering my thoughts on what kind of activities might be good to run in order to explore the themes of the exhibition. For example, we’re trying to get the children to think about the importance of questioning the histories that they are being told, who is telling it and why. The workshop will allow the children to make something with their hands, as well as have a conversation about the exhibition.
What are the key conversations you hope will be initiated by this exhibition?
Definitely to understand that the history of ceramics, like anything else in Britain, has a colonial past and to understand the impact that this has had on who is part of ceramics today. Also, to understand that clay can be a powerful political tool; that it is art and not just pots that one can use in their homes. For me, it’s also about understanding the way in which the tradition of clay expands beyond books or the establishment – the human interaction of Magdalene Odundo learning from Ladi Kwali, me learning from women across the world.
How has this exhibition inspired you and influenced your artistic process going forward?
It’s completely changed my own perception of myself. I feel the trust Jareh has put in me – like “you are worth being part of this space”. I am taking that with me now wherever I go. The exhibition has also influenced the way I create work – instead of creating whatever I want to make, I’ve learnt to develop work through a conversation with someone else. For me, this exhibition has been life-changing.
GETTING TO KNOW YOU
A book you have to have in your collection? Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit
A song / album that defines the soundtrack of your life to date? Overflow by Dahlia Sleeps
A film / TV show that you can watch/have watched repeatedly? Parks and Recreation
The first stage production you saw and what it meant to you (play, dance or concert)? Kids’ classical music concerts my mum would take me to as a child.
What’s made you sad, mad, and glad this week? People around me
The Body, Vessel, Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art exhibition will be at York Art Gallery until Sunday 18th September 2022. You can attend drop-in non-artist-led workshops in conversation with the exhibition between 11am-4pm on Saturday 20th and Saturday 27th August. Find out more here.
Follow Bisila on Instagram