“Terra Cognita. Salt Flats" is made of very rough light-grey clay with carved puddles in celestial blue. The puddles are glossy, glazed with Celadon glaze incorporating crystals. It's contrasting with the background in colour and texture. The piece is visually sourced from both Atacama salt flats and lithium mines in the north of Chile. High-fired at 1250 degrees Celsius, 100% water resistant. Made by hand with high quality stoneware locally sourced around Barcelona. Framed in a floating frame with a metal fastening to put on the wall. The primary source for the Terra Cognita series is aerial footage of isolated lands. From the distance of a space satellite and without any context it’s impossible to distinguish a mining quarry from a desert valley, an extraction site from a salt flat - both look desolate and mesmerising. I’m not interested in building hierarchies. Rather, I want to document these phenomena side by side, regardless of their origin, as parts of a new and ever-changing ecosystem, and explore how the landscape genre can evolve to reflect all the complexities of the modern interplay between humanity and nature. Reproducing these images in clay gives a materiality and a sense of closeness to the terrains that are so completely out of reach for most of us, to the point of illegality. Framed and hung on the wall, within touching distance, these works evoke complex feelings related to landscape: longing, nostalgia and unease. They seem to claim: “I was here”, allowing the viewer to get familiar with the unknowable.

Maryia Virshych

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Maryia Virshych (b. 1989, Minsk, BY) received her Design Research MA from the Bau Design College in Barcelona, Spain (2016) and a BA in Architecture from Belarusian National Technical University (2012). She completed a Ceramics and Glass program at Escola Massana (Barcelona, ES) in 2024. Maryia has a background in architecture, space and product design, and craft, all of which reflect on her current work. She held positions as a creative at several design and art studios in Barcelona. In 2019, she started her own artistic practice - virmary, working primarily with clay. Maryia received numerous awards, such as the Design Award from the Royal Society of Art and the Residency Award from Domaine de Boisbuchet. In 2024 Maryia was a finalist at the XXXI Competition of Contemporary Ceramics Grottaglie and National Sculpture Prize Maria Belen Morales. She showed her work at various collective exhibitions: Ceramics Museum (Grottaglie. IT), Malta Society of Art (Valetta, MT), CICA Museum (Gimpo, KR), Thrown Gallery (London, UK), Site Brooklyn (New York City, USA), Palais Galerie (Neuchatel, CH), Sala d’Art Jove (Barcelona, ES), Cluster Crafts (London, UK) and others.