Lívia Rizzo Amaral: “I have learned with clay that I like what is strange, what asks for a second look; what remains in an almost unfinished state, as if it still held the possibility of transforming”

Ceramicist Lívia Rizzo Amaral gives us this text and these images that speak of her and her artistic practic:

“I grew up in southern Brazil, in a family of artists. I decided to study Design, but I spent my university years working in the world of gastronomy. From a very early age I was fascinated by the possibility of transforming matter with my hands and awakening a feeling in others, something capable of remaining in memory.

It was also during that time that I had my first contact with ceramics, attending the workshop of a great ceramicist, our neighbor. At that moment, clay entered my life as a possibility, a discovery that would remain stored away for a long time.

Life later took me to many places. I lived in other countries, immersed myself in other cultures and tried myself out in different areas of work. Each experience broadened my perspective, but also brought me closer to what had always been present: an interest in processes, in nature, in the everyday, and in what can be transformed.

More recently, while living in Bali, Indonesia, ceramics came back into my life viscerally. I spent a year immersed in nature, reorganizing my priorities, reaffirming values and learning another rhythm.”

Studio Api was born from that experience. “Api,” in Indonesian, means fire: the fire that moves and energizes. The same fire that passes through clay, leaving its marks. In the midst of the bustle and concrete of São Paulo, the studio is a place of slow time, of listening and sensitivity, where I keep searching for a life in harmony with simplicity and the rhythm of nature, just as I would ideally like to live it.

The long summers at the beach. The winters in the mountains. The smell of wet earth, the warmth of fire. On Sundays, the table set with flowers picked from our garden. A silent balance between refinement and simplicity. It is from that everyday life that my way of looking, and the way I have learned to be in the world, are born.

I understand myself through processes. I have learned with clay that I like what is strange, what asks for a second look; what remains in an almost unfinished state, as if it still held the possibility of transforming.

I am interested in the atmosphere of a piece, the presence it creates, that which remains beyond the object. I look to nature for the elements that will make up those surfaces. I layer them with great freedom, often using my hands, feeling and transmitting those sensations.

That is what I seek to achieve: an experience, an emotion, a strangeness capable of awakening curiosity and, in some way, resonating in the other.”

Chamas Collection

“I created these pieces during the year I lived in Bali. As I shaped the clay, I was shaping and discovering myself in this new place. Just as fire needs air to exist, I too was looking for space. Space to create, to reconnect with what moves me and to find another rhythm of life. This collection symbolizes that moment. These are wood-fired pieces that carry the marks of that process: traces left by the flames and the ashes.
The textures and colors that emerged in these pieces have inspired my work ever since.” Photos: Pau Marchant

“I like to think that a piece is never entirely finished. Even after firing, it keeps transforming: in the light it receives, in the way it ages, in the relationship it builds with the space and with whoever observes it.”

Resonancias Collection

“I created this set of pieces without the intention of them being a collection. Together, they make up a series of experiments, the fruit of my own exercise in listening, of an attempt to recover memories, and of creating with total freedom.” Photos: Leticia Remião

Image Archive

“I keep many images that I collect over time: photographs taken while traveling or even on the streets of São Paulo, where I live.

It’s curious to notice how these images, often without any conscious intention, speak to one another. How there is a palette that repeats itself, an attraction to certain textures, shapes and surfaces. Some images convey something strange, almost tactile, even through the gaze.

I don’t use these photographs as a direct reference for creating the atmosphere of a piece. I like to go through them alongside finished works and be surprised by the resonances that appear, as if something that already existed in my way of seeing found a new way to exist.”

“Lately, memories have been surfacing easily. It’s as if the clay could tell me stories, make me recover those forgotten chapters. They say that shaping clay is shaping yourself. I found that a beautiful thing to think about.

I am still becoming a ceramicist, like someone trying on an identity. Since reconnecting with clay, I feel that it shapes me as much as I shape it.”

Project by Lívia Rizzo Amaral