Le monde qui tient dans les mains

The Jequitinhonha Valley, in the northeastern region of Minas Gerais, constitutes one of Brazil’s most emblematic cultural landscapes. Long before the area was identified as a center of artisanal production, it functioned as a living school: women shaped the local clay with gestures refined over centuries, transmitting a body of knowledge that responded to daily needs while simultaneously producing symbolic worlds.

The Valley Collective emerges today as the contemporary face of this continuum. Adriana Xavier, Alice Ribeiro, Ana Ribeiro, Anisia Lima, Andréia Andrade, Augustto Ribeiro, Conceição, Durvalina Gomes, Glória Maria Andrade, Irene Gomes da Silva, Maria Pereira, Mariete Santana, Rita Ferreira, Salvina Gomes, Terezinha Barbosa, Valdete Fernandes, and Vera Lopes embody a lineage in which clay becomes memory, testimony, and invention. Their works do not replicate formulas; they extend a cultural thread. Each figure, each doll, each polished surface colored with natural engobes is a gesture that both preserves and reinvents tradition.

The exhibition The Earth Shaped By Art introduces European audiences to objects of striking presence and, equally, to a subtle lesson about Brazil’s interior territories: the depth of ancestry, the slow temporality of clay, the resilience of sertão women, and the collective intelligence that transforms limited resources into enduring cultural force.

This show is an initiative of the State of Minas Gerais and Sebrae MG — the Brazilian Service for Support of Micro and Small Enterprises of Minas Gerais. For years, Sebrae MG has developed a program to support crafts and the creative economy of the Jequitinhonha Valley, working directly with the Valley Collective to strengthen the ceramists of the region: training, productive organization, market access, and enhancement of the territory’s cultural identity.