Workshop Ex Voto

Ana de Almeida and Valeria Pechena hold a two-parted workshop for adults and invite the participants to create mini-sculptures using clay, silicone, and paraffin. Please register by writing an e-mail to info@philomena.plus Inspired by the artists’ collaborative practice of care and making, this workshop invites you to work with the processes of the Ex-Voto — a small wax object made meant to carry, transform and release anxiety, pain, hope, longing. Ana de Almeida and Valeria Pechena translate this tradition into a contemporary sculptural language: paraffin forms that hover between body fragment and abstract shape, each one holding a personal and collective charge. In this workshop, you are invited to bring your own experiences — of care, displacement, memory, or desire — and to shape them into a small amulet or Ex-Voto of your own. Working with simple materials and guided by the artists’ process, you will explore how an object can hold what is difficult to say, and what it means to ritually make, carry, and perhaps release it. Attending both days is encouraged, but each day also stands on its own. All levels of experience are welcome.