From a collection of clay shards and flora pieces collected from the banks of the Almonda River, a piece of clay stands out. A pot mouth.

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Its original texture succumbed and worn, new scalped forms, marks of the passage of time, and others added, probably by the different forces of the river current. Its form summons the relationship between what is being seen and its “having been”, referring to a mystery, to a memory so collected and now immortal, that instigates the possibility of recovering a living, or lived world. Its pale tone – color that inspires the linen sheet – serves as an element of transport to a now-distant and inaccessible place.

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The lack of knowledge regarding its origin, its complete form, and the reason for its fragmentation, leaves those who observe it with a sense of wonder at the occult and the unusual way in which it presents itself, giving space to the imagination to conceive its provenance.

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A fragment as a trace, a fragment as a document. The pot mouth, now discovered from an ancient pile of sediment and river water, was collected during the dry season on the low banks of the river. River, who saw women in simple clothes and headscarves come to live on his bed. The washerwomen normally took zinc or clay bowls and went down there to wash clothes. The gestures of the washerwomen, the clash of the linen dipped and shaken in the water, and the shine of the flying dew coming from the fabric rubbed on the tripeça, offer an ethnographic feature, that inspires the construction of the portrait of a scene from these women's daily lives. 

The washerwoman is part of the river. What is found there is a trace that refers to a collective memory stored in what remains hidden and preserved in its margins.

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Boca de Pote culminates in the enchantment due to the mystery and peculiarity that this pot mouth offers when discovered. A portrait, an imaginary, and an object are thus celebrated.