Fire alters the clay. Chance reshapes the intention.
FUEGO: Alchemy and Transformation brings together pit-fired ceramic works created since 2024, exploring the surrender of control, the beauty of impermanence, and the possibilities that emerge through change.
Working primarily in figurative ceramic sculpture, Josefina invites fire, smoke, ash, minerals, earth, and weather to become collaborators. Pit firing leaves much to chance: each work emerges with a surface marked by the elements and the particular conditions of its firing. Fire becomes both a destructive and generative force—an agent of alchemy.
These works also carry the experience of community. Created through communal pit firings in Southern Alberta, they emerge from gatherings where artists build fires, share knowledge, and tend the flames together. Making becomes a shared ritual of patience, uncertainty, and transformation.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Josefina Rodriguez is a Canadian-Argentinian artist based in Calgary, Alberta, on Treaty 7 Territory. She holds a BFA in Ceramics from the Alberta University of the Arts.
Drawing on her experiences growing up in Latin America, Rodriguez explores the social and cultural forces that shape gender roles. Her hand-built figurative ceramics and expressive drawings challenge narrow representations of the female experience, making room for complexity, sensuality, and autonomy. Her practice celebrates sensation, pleasure, and resistance, finding strength and beauty in the unconventional and rebellious aspects of womanhood.