Stomping Grounds: Senior Seminar Highlights Show
Sophia Gayoso-Nordling
As a second‑generation Cuban‑American, I inherit a history that has been fragmented and rewritten by colonialism, forced assimilation, and displacement. I turn to Latin American folk art and ceramics as means of reconnecting to pre‑industrial roots and to practices that survived erasure. I aim to investigate ancestral practices and to reframe them from the contemporary perspective of my lived experience and memories. My focus in the practice and medium emerged from an FCLC Research & Creative Practice Grant, in which I completed an experimental ceramics apprenticeship in Umécuaro, Michoacán, where the language of local craft reshaped how I hold and tell memory. Ceramics are central to this work because of their deep spiritual and functional roles across the Caribbean and Mesoamerica: from Taíno ritual objects in Cuba to the polychromatic pottery of the Purépecha region, clay connects me materially to my ancestors.
My work featured in Stomping Grounds centers on a set of 28 hand‑formed air‑dry clay domino tiles and a handcrafted ceramic case. The tiles retain the marks of their making, such as thumbprints and uneven edges, and the set is fully playable by design. The ceramic case functions as a vessel and mnemonic: its lid is centered by an ancient spiral, a marker of return and migration, and framed with high‑relief floral motifs that echo regional folk ornamentation I studied in Umécuaro, Michoacán, during my residency. These details translate regional visual language into a personal archive. The installation, which includes a table, chairs, framed instructions, and a playable set, suggests that cultural preservation is not a static practice, but a dynamic one. I invite viewers to relive alternative versions of my memories by physically interacting with the ceramics through touch and play.