Joya: AiR / Ani Lacy / USA

Joya: AiR / Ani Lacy / USA

"My residency period at Joya: AiR was incredibly transformative. I spent my mornings walking the landscape, listening and observing, allowing the land to guide my attention. In a place so quiet and remote, I found that the land itself had more to say than I expected and I still feel that it has more to say to whoever is able to listen.

The opportunity created by Donna and Simon through Joya AiR fosters both community, through a carefully selected group of diverse artists; and solitude, through private studios and open schedules. The format of this residency allows for a depth of attention and a slowness of practice rarely possible in everyday life.

Working with local wild clay that I gathered through an ethical and site-sensitive process, I developed a series of unfired clay sculptures intended to interact with environmental elements of wind, rain, and time. This approach treated the land not as a backdrop, but as a collaborator and co-author of artistic labor. 

The work I made at Joya: AiR cannot be reproduced elsewhere. It emerged from a dialogue with this particular place, shaped by impermanence, ecological reciprocity, and a commitment to seeing the land as an active participant in the creative process. I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to be in relationship with both the land and the people of Joya AiR."

Ani Lacy

Ani Lacy is an American artist currently living in the southwest of England. Her practice centers around clay and foraged materials, using site-specific methods to explore themes of migration, Indigenous identity, ecological memory, and place. She holds a Master of Fine Art from Bath School of Art and Design and is currently completing the department’s first-ever practice-based PhD in the History of Art at the University of Bristol.

Her doctoral research seeks to insert colonoware; pottery made by enslaved Indigenous and African peoples during the colonial period, into the art historical canon on its own terms. Both her academic and studio work are informed by Indigenous methodologies, emphasizing embodied knowledge, ecological sensitivity, and the co-creative relationships between people, materials, and landscape.

You can read more about her work at: http://anilacy.com
And about her current curatorial project, Earthbound: Art, Migration, and Material Connections hosted by the Bath Fringe Arts Festival here: https://www.fringeartsbath.co.uk/earthbound