Material Cultures

At Joya: AiR, material cultures describes the ways objects, materials, and physical practices shape social life, knowledge, belief, and power. It asks not only what is made, but how materials act within culture—conditioning labour, memory, and ways of living.

Until the late 1960s, this territory remained largely pre-industrial, long after Spain’s classic industrial period had ended. Before mass emigration, the local economy was shaped by subsistence and low-yield agriculture and by exclusion from the so-called Spanish Miracle—a period of rapid economic growth driven by coastal tourism and urban industrial centres that bypassed the interior uplands.

Life here developed through a small and finite set of materials drawn directly from the surrounding landscape:

• Clay

• Wood

• Stone

• Esparto grass

These materials structured everyday existence.

Clay formed cooking vessels, roof tiles, bonding agents, and floors.

Wood supported construction, furniture, tools, cooking, and heat.

Stone defined buildings, enclosures, and permanence.

Esparto grass enabled food preparation, farming practices, construction, and furniture—binding labour to landscape.

Material cultures, in this sense, are not decorative or symbolic alone. They are systems of knowledge, embedded in making, maintenance, repair, and use. Materials are not neutral: they resist, endure, weather, and return. Skills are learned through repetition, gesture, and necessity.

Here, material culture can be understood as:

The social and cultural meanings embedded in objects, materials, and physical practices, and the ways these shape human experience across time and place.

Several principles underpin this approach:

• Objects carry meaning — tools, structures, and artefacts hold memory, value, and belief.

• Materials are active agents — they shape process, scale, and possibility.

• Making is cultural knowledge — embodied, situated, and inseparable from landscape.

These are the naturally occurring materials available to residents at Joya: AiR.*

* Esparto grass requires advance organisation, though limited quantities exist in the immediate environment.

Joya: AiR provides the tools necessary to work with and transform these materials.

Artists with specific lines of inquiry are encouraged to discuss requirements prior to residency.

No additional materials are supplied.

Our Adobe Wood Fired Kiln is available during winter months only (see below)