Photo by Claire Esparros
Brazilian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Sabrina Bezerra (b. 1987) creates handmade ceramic sculptures that draw on the formal language of ancient pottery and contemporary abstraction. Working with black sculptural clay, she reinterprets the traditional vocabulary of the vessel—neck, body, base, and handle—into distinctive forms.
Sabrina grew up in Northeastern Brazil, where she and her brother spent long afternoons playing in the dark earth of their grandmother’s farm. They would return home covered in clay, only to be washed off under the hose. That memory of soil, family, and place runs throughout her work.
Her ceramics are characterized by exaggerated proportions, unusual silhouettes, and unexpected openings and projections. Narrow bases expand into broad, winglike forms; handles become limbs; circular openings interrupt rounded bodies. Many of the sculptures take on an anthropomorphic quality, suggesting stylized figures, birds, ceremonial objects, or ancient artifacts without resolving fully into any one reference.
Bezerra favors dark, earthy tones, from charcoal and deep brown to muted terracotta and black. Matte, granular surfaces emphasize the natural texture of the clay, while the restraint of their decoration directs attention toward silhouette, proportion, and balance—an approach that perhaps reflects her earlier training and career in graphic design.
Though relatively modest in scale, the sculptures possess a distinctly monumental presence. They seem at once ancient and contemporary, recalling archaeological and ceremonial vessels while embracing the abstraction and formal experimentation of modern sculpture.
For Bezerra, shaping vessels from dark earth is also a way of touching the memory of her childhood and the resilience of the women who raised her. Though she has lived in Lisbon and now in the United States, her work continues to root her in Brazil—in its textures, smells, colors, and stories.
She signs these works Antonia, her given first name, chosen in honor of Saint Anthony. In doing so, she pays homage to her people, her family, and her ancestors.
