Ricardo Lima

“Phonotriene” explores the intersection of craft, sound, and ritual as a pathway for social cohesion. Drawing from a hybrid personal background of Caribbean and Iberian heritage, I examine syncretic traditions, specifically the Venezuelan ‘Culto de María Lionza’ and Portuguese ‘figurado’ ceramics to understand how ritual objects can facilitate a communal healing soundscape.
In my degree project, sound is used to bypass rational defence mechanisms, inviting participants into a state of collective vulnerability. The culmination of this research is a ritual performance designed to ‘repatriate’ Nordic spiritual energies back to their source. These forces, once summoned by Venezuelan shamans to help and heal their practitioners, have undergone deep transformations through their tropical exile, becoming integrated into a cult alongside indigenous, African, and Christian deities. Through ceramic sounding objects, I call these energies home, using their transformed state to help navigate the tensions of a newly multi-cultural Swedish society.