Featured Collection by Bisila Noha

Featured Collection:

Bisila Noha

An online solo collection
10th - 27th October

Photograph by Maxine Pennington

We are proud to present this brand new collection by Bisila Noha, a body of work about origins in so many ways.

It's been a pleasure to witness the experimentation and evolution of Bisila's work over the last few years. In 2020, her first collection of Baney Clay pieces were launched as part of our exhibition 'Gatherers', gaining attention from international press. A series started from a bag of clay from Equatorial Guinea, called Baney Clay by Bisila after her father's birthplace there, with explorations of Bisila's own identity unknowingly embedded within it. Leading on to her Reunion, Ignis and Primus series and many museum collections, this grounded starting point has allowed this artist to grow in the scale of her work as well as the scale of her voice.

With another batch of Baney Clay arriving in her studio last year, we are excited to see Bisila return to the material that began it all. This new collection includes the fourth iteration of this highly sought-after series, presented by us as the third goes on display as part of Bisila's very first exhibition in Equitorial Guinea - a meaningful milestone in her work and a true sign of the connection that her work radiates.

This collection also features four works from a series Bisila has titled 'leftovers', crafted from reclaimed clay from her many different series and furthering the importance she places in meaning in material.

These two series are accompanied by Bisila's own words and photographs as well as a collaborative soundscape and photography by Maxine Pennington of the studio Extensive Conversations.

Soundscape

To bring you closer to the land where the soil comes from, Bisila has collaborated with multidisciplinary artist Maxine Pennington, from the studio Extensive Conversations. to make a soundscape using her own recordings to transport us to Baney.

We encourage you to play this as you view the collection.

Photograph by Bisila Noha, Baney, Equatorial Guinea

Baney Clay

'This is the fourth iteration of the project I started back in 2020 using Baney Clay I foraged in April 2023.

That trip I really didn’t want to bring clay. I didn’t want to go through the stress of going through security at different airports. But my uncle Silvano convinced me to do it. Together, we went on his pickup truck to the spot where, over four years prior, he had foraged clay with my parents. I wasn’t there that time.

I am glad he pushed me to do it as making these pieces brings me an immense amount of joy. The freedom of throwing them on the wheel. Each piece a different shape.

The freedom I allow myself when trimming them, mixing techniques to let the clay and the shapes speak for themselves.

The playfulness mixing the clays, trying to imagine how they will look after the firings.

We all know clay is alive and we are fascinated by its transformation. All the surprises! These pieces are full of them. The stones that come to the surface when the clay has not been processed or fully refined. The cracks. The specks of colour travelling the surface of the pots following the rhythm of the wheel’s spinning motion.

I would keep them all. So I hope you love them and want to take one (or many) home.

And it is all about the idea of home. My second trip to Baney in 2023 was very magical as I embodied the connection to Equatorial Guinea — to the Bioko Island more specifically — I had been developing through clay, through this project, since 2020. “Once there, the gap finally closed. I felt that connection and deepened it.” I wrote

about the trip.

As I work this clay I keep understanding myself. I keep evolving.

So when you look at them, please bear this in mind. They are a portal to my life, to life in Baney, my ancestors both there and in Spain.'

Bisila Noha, 2024

Collected works using Baney Clay and 'leftovers' using reclaimed clays by Bisila Noha

Photography by Maxine Pennington

Leftovers

'Being in between (cultures, countries) often means that something is left behind.
Not always permanently. In each situation. In each context. In each location. We pick and choose those parts of us that will be most appropriate, most useful. Is that right? Natural? Or is it pure survival?

I once told my dad (a black man) that I felt I belonged nowhere.
Neither here, nor there. In the wake of my black consciousness which I was experiencing in London, where I couldn’t fully relate to the Black British experience neither as a foreigner.
In the new places and circles I wanted to inhabit, I felt an outsider. The same feeling I was increasingly feeling towards the spaces I had always been part of. The universal experience of the mixed-race child or the immigrant, perhaps.

He said, ‘You are an amphibious person. You are extremely lucky, as you can be everywhere. Be aware of that.”
And that is an art, not only a gift.
The codes, the language, the references... changing depending on where we are. Whom we speak to. The amphibious being’s physiology changing to survive in water, or on the land.

Having recently travelled to Equatorial Guinea and then straight after to Spain to finally come back ‘home’ in London, I started reflecting upon what I leave behind and its impact.

I moved to London at 25. Still a work-in-progress young woman (very much still WIP today as a matter of fact). It has been in London where I’ve become aware of and embraced my blackness, my womanhood and my queerness.

So when I go ‘back’ to the two other countries I could call home, something’s gotta give: something is not fully coming with me, or it needs to be softened, unspoken, laughed at or ignored.
The transformation to avoid arguments, being outcasted or judged.

A gift or a curse? What’s left behind?

I made the Leftover pieces with the trimmings from the other ‘full’ pieces — the acceptable parts. A little homage to all those of us who don’t fall under the norm of whichever place we find ourselves in at a certain moment in time. An ode to what is compromised. To that which makes us special and whole.

The clay I couldn’t discard. So here they are.

For those of us in the margins.
For those of us amphibious beings of human life.'

Bisila Noha 2024

'Leftovers' by Bisila Noha

Photography by Maxine Pennington

About the Artist

Bisila Noha is a Spanish-Equatoguinean London-based ceramic artist, researcher and writer.

With her work she aims 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. She is a storyteller with a particular interest in the contributions of women of colour to the history of art and craft. As such, her words are a bridge bringing the past - the forgotten, the ignored, the belittled - to the present; to us.

Her work can be found in many public and private collections including the V&A, the Crafts Council, Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery and the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.