The exhibition includes Syd Carpenter’s “Heart of the Yam” (2006). (photo courtesy of Syd Carpenter)

Craft Contemporary has announced “tierra,” the fourth installment of its clay biennial. On view May 31-Oct. 25, “tierra” reconsiders the biennial’s scope by expanding its focus beyond ceramic and clay as a singular medium to encompass broader practices grounded in land and earth. The fourteen featured artists work with earth-based materials as something more than physical substances, treating them as carriers of history shaped by the people who have worked, lived on, and been displaced from the land. “tierra” asks what it means to truly know a place, and how that knowledge gets passed down through the things we make with our hands. “tierra” is organized by lead curator Andres Payan Estrada, with a curatorial committee formed by Frida Cano, Joel Garcia, Mercedes Dorame and Cannupa Hanska Luger.

“There is a quiet weight to the word tierra. It settles slowly, like dust after movement, like clay in a riverbed,” Estrada said. “The exhibition not only recognizes earth as material, but also how knowledge itself is carried, formed and shared.”

“tierra” is a natural expression of everything Craft Contemporary stands for,” Cano said. “Our curatorial values urge us to look to the land, to ancestral knowledge and to the people whose hands have shaped both. This exhibition brings all of that together in a way that feels especially pressing right now.”

“tierra” is part of “The [Untold] Story of Craft,” Craft Contemporary’s curatorial philosophy that prioritizes storytelling, accessibility, sustainability and honors the natural world with a commitment to minimal waste. Rooted in lunar cycles and the Tongva calendar’s cyclical rhythms, the museum’s curatorial approach bridges past and present, linking ancestral wisdom with contemporary craft practices. The series is scheduled to feature two exhibitions annually, each dedicated to exploring a central theme tied to nature’s elements: “Air, Water, Earth and Fire.”

Craft Contemporary launched its clay biennial in 2018 under the title “Melting Point,” establishing a dedicated platform to reflect on two decades of explosive growth in ceramic art and the radical departure from functional pottery traditions toward experimental, expressive and often deliberately imperfect sculptural forms. The series was founded on the premise that contemporary ceramics had evolved into a medium uniquely capable of recording the body’s physical gestures and the artist’s psychological state, prioritizing the raw, visceral and the “unknowable” over technical precision. Together, the biennial editions – “Melting Point” (2018), “The Body, The Object, The Other” (2020), “Wayfinding” (2023) and now “tierra” (2026) – have shaped the event into a continuous exploration that treats “craft” as a verb.

For information, visit craftcontemporary.org.

Craft Contemporary is located at 5814 Wilshire Blvd.