Talhão, 2019

The ancestral tradition of carrying and collecting water as been present globally.

Talhão is the name of a tradition vessel made in Azores islands for saving rain water.

This object, which had as its essential function to be the water reservoir of the house, was much appreciated and used in domestic work.

Since the earliest times of the Azorean settlement, clay has been an important raw material for the production of various utensils related to domestic activity.

The ceramic industrial movement had a great increase in Portugal around the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but just only twenty years ago women were allowed to enter a pottery workshop. This place was exclusive for men, although most of the pieces produced were mainly used by women in the domestic sphere.

The performance shows two women building a traditional vessel - talhão, around a female body.

This performance was made on a pottery workshop turned into a Museum, open to women only twenty years ago.