Anthologies of a Receptacle

Participating artists:

Ayla Tavares & Celeida Tostes

October 20 - November 29, 2025

1 Place du Louvre, 75001, Paros

Press Release (pdf)

Hatch Gallery is pleased to present Anthologies of a Receptacle, an exhibition that brings together two Brazilian artists from different generations, Celeida Tostes (1929–1995) and Ayla Tavares (b. 1990), whose practices explore clay as vessel, memory and transformation. 

Tostes is represented by key works that trace her poetic engagement with clay as both material and metaphor. Untitled (n/d), Wheels (1983) and Amassadinhos (1991) highlight her interest in touch, collectivity, and organic process. At the center of the exhibition lies the photographic narrative of Passagem (1979), her most emblematic work, in which she enclosed herself in a clay urn before breaking free. Part sculpture, part performance, it embodies cycles of death, rebirth, and transformation. 

In dialogue, Tavares carries investigations into a contemporary language of sculpture and installation. Her work Anthologies of a Receptacle (2025), which lends its name to the exhibition, draws from both Passagem and Ursula K. Le Guin’s book ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’, envisioning the vessel as a space of gathering and sustenance. Ceramic body parts, shells, and vases are constellated as shelters for memory, ritual, and transformation—resonating with her own experience of pregnancy and postpartum. In the Interlude series, produced during her early years as an immigrant in Spain, Tavares turns to the imagery of house and city, tracing architectures of belonging and the fragile negotiations of life in transition. 

Together, the works of Tostes and Tavares stage a quiet dialogue between form and emptiness. Nothing is imposed; instead, the pieces invite, contain, and hold. They remind us that art, like the vessel, is a space of gathering—where fragility shelters strength, where myth and matter converge, and where silence becomes the condition for listening.