Presented at the Biennale of Contemporary Keramics 2026 in Rhodes, Greece, Where the Day Starts brings together five wall sculptures from Brazilian artist Ayla Tavares’s series Matéria Matéria. Through the encounter between graphite and ceramic, the installation investigates matter as a site of memory, measurement, speculation, and transformation, where scientific observation, mythological narratives, and embodied perception intersect.
In Matéria Matéria, Tavares explores humanity’s persistent desire to understand and account for the world through systems of knowledge: to observe, catalogue, measure, and give form to phenomena that exceed our immediate comprehension. The works move between geological time, celestial observation, ancient cartographies, and fragments of the human body, revealing the connections between the physical and the imagined.
The work Canopus and the Measurement of the Earth refers to the studies of the ancient Greek philosopher and astronomer Posidonius, who attempted to calculate the circumference of the Earth through the observation of the star Canopus from two locations: Rhodes and Alexandria.
In Rhodes, Canopus appeared close to the horizon, at the limit of the visible plane, while in Alexandria the star reached an altitude of approximately 7.5 degrees. This angular difference represented one forty-eighth of the Earth’s circumference, allowing Posidonius to estimate the planet’s dimensions by comparing celestial observation with terrestrial distance. Tavares’ sculpture transforms this historical act of measurement into a meditation on the relationship between the cosmos, the Earth, and the human body. The star appears alongside the horizon line and terrestrial references, while elements such as the hand and the eye recall the bodily instruments through which knowledge is produced. These recurring motifs in Matéria Matéria reflect a broader human impulse to understand the unknown, whether through science, mythology, culture, or imagination. The concept of sympatheia, central to Posidonius’ philosophy, also resonates throughout the installation. Often translated as “cosmic sympathy,” sympatheia describes an interconnected universe in which all things participate in relationships of influence and correspondence. It proposes matter not as passive substance, but as part of a living network shaped by invisible forces, connections, and transformations.
This dialogue between matter, narrative, and geography is also present in Island Rises and Assemblage of Fossil Ammonites, which evoke the ancient relationship between islands, exploration, and the unknown. In antiquity, unexplored territories were often shaped through myths and narratives that filled the gaps of empirical knowledge, producing imagined geographies, sacred spaces, and projected utopias. The legendary Cassiterides, or “Tin Islands,” described by ancient Greek and Phoenician sources as distant Atlantic islands rich in metals, embody this fusion of geography, mythology, and material desire.
Posidonius’ writings contributed to the attempts to locate and describe these islands, intertwining the search for resources with the construction of imagined landscapes. Across the five works in Where the Day Starts, Tavares creates a constellation where fragments of history, science, mythology, and matter converge. The installation invites the viewer to reflect on the origins of knowledge and on the continuous human effort to locate ourselves within the vast relationships between the Earth, the cosmos, and time.