Creative Thought Space

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Vandria Borari | Alter do Chão, Lower-Tapajós, Pará, Brazil | www.vandriagarcia.wixsite.com/meusite/en
Ceramic Artist and Indigenous Leader

What do you think being creative means?
Being creative is not about “inventing something new” in an individualistic or market-driven way. It is a gesture of continuity of life, rooted in relationship with the territory, the ancestors, the rivers, the forest, the elders, and the generations to come. Creativity is born from listening to Mother Earth, not from a separation between person and object.

How do you include creativity in your life?
In my life, creativity is not an individual invention: it is a living heritage. It springs from the ancestry that crosses me, from my roots grounded in my territory, from listening to the elders, and from the continuous relationship with the earth, which is not a resource but body, memory, and thought. For me, creating is allowing these knowledges to keep breathing in the present, despite colonial violence.
 
What are your thoughts on how your life has influenced your creative imagination, and how your creative imagination has influenced your life?
For me, life and imagination are not separate. My journey, the territory, and ancestral memory have shaped my creative imagination. On the other hand, creating has taught me to keep existing, transforming experience into collective strength. Imagination, for me, is a practice of permanence.
 
What, if any, exercises do you do to get into a creative mode?
My creative mode happens through listening: to silence, to the forest, to the rivers, and to the elders. Walking in the territory, remembering my childhood and my experiences, and respecting the pace of nature are practices that open the mind and guide creation.

How important do you think creativity is in life?
Creativity is important because it helps us stay alive in the face of attempts to erase us. It strengthens our culture, our spirituality, and our existence. It reconnects memory and allows us to imagine and sustain possible futures. Creating is an act of care and freedom.

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About
Vandria Borari (b. 1983) is a ceramic artist, activist, and Indigenous leader of the Borari people, from the Alter do Chão Indigenous Territory in the Lower Tapajós region of the Brazilian Amazon. Her artistic practice is deeply rooted in her cosmo-identity, spirituality, and intimate relationship with ancestral territory.

Through ancestral Tapajonic ceramics, Vandria keeps the ancestral knowledge of the Borari people alive. Using modeling and firing techniques transmitted orally across generations, her works express Indigenous cosmology, revealing encantarias, territorial beings, and graphic patterns that both safeguard and manifest the living spirituality of the Tapajós peoples. Local clay, rivers, forests, animals, and the encantados (protective spirits) are central elements in her practice, reaffirming the inseparability of art, nature, and spirituality. Each work is also a political act of cultural resistance against colonialism and the multiple threats facing the Amazon, such as deforestation, land grabbing, illegal mining, and megaprojects. Ceramics thus become a tool for denunciation, memory, and reconstruction, contributing to the visibility of the struggle and the ongoing existence of Indigenous peoples.

Vandria holds a bachelor’s degree in Tourism (IESPES, 2008) and in Law (UFOPA, 2019). She is a member of the Kuxiimawara Borari Indigenous Association of the Alter do Chão Territory and a member of the Indigenous women’s musical group As Karuana, which sings in defense of waters and forests. She is the founder and curator of the Tapajós Indigenous Exhibition -Mukameẽsawa Tapajowara Kitiwara (MUTAK), created in 2016, which brings together artists from the 13 Indigenous peoples of the Lower Tapajós. She also founded the Ukara Wasú Indigenous Art Center in Alter do Chão.