A ceramic artist from Spain has found more than a workshop in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province. He has found a home. Drawing on both Chinese and Spanish artistic traditions, Jaume Ribalta has forged a distinctive style through his work, and his journey has become a testament to cultural exchange between the two countries.
Ribalta grew up in Tarrega, a small town in Catalonia, Spain, with a long-standing ceramic tradition and close to Barcelona. His artistic journey began when he was just 8, when he joined the first Petit Taller, or Little Workshop.
One of his earliest memories is of a bathtub filled with paint and clay, a childhood scene that would become the starting point of his lifelong relationship with art and ceramics.
"To a child, it looked like the remains of a performance by a maverick painter. It was a strange and magical place, and I immediately felt that I wanted to explore it," he says.
"Ceramics had already been part of my childhood. I visited my grandparents' house, which contained many vases and porcelain plates. But at Escola Massana, a school of art and design in Barcelona, I began to understand ceramics more consciously, not only as a craft, but as a language combining drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, design and time," he says.
Ribalta came to China in 2017 to work as an art educator, but teaching was only part of what drew him here. During his holidays, he traveled around the country, studied Chinese calligraphy and traditional painting, and sought to deepen his understanding of Chinese culture.
"I had been fascinated for a long time by cobalt-blue porcelain. I told myself that I would not leave China before finding the place where qinghua (blue-and-white) porcelain was made. My first years were spent mainly in Jiangsu province, particularly in Rugao and Nantong, where I learned from local artists and craftspeople. I studied the brush, rice paper, calligraphy and the symbolic language of traditional Chinese painting," he says.
When Ribalta first arrived in Jingdezhen in 2019, he felt an immediate sense of recognition. After traveling through different parts of China and learning to see the country through the lens of diverse artistic traditions, he felt that Jingdezhen was the place where many of the questions that had shaped his artistic journey could continue to unfold.
"What struck me most was that the tradition was alive. Jingdezhen was not simply a museum or a historical attraction. It was a working city where people continued to practice skills passed down through generations. The continuity between the past and the present moved me deeply," he says.
In 2022, Ribalta moved his studio permanently to Jingdezhen. He had come to China as a teacher, but stayed on as a student, a role the city continues to remind him to embrace, showing him that there is always more to discover, learn and explore.
Ribalta says his work brings together visual elements from his native Spain with traditional Chinese ceramic techniques, including blue-and-white porcelain and red underglaze decoration.
"For me, it is a deeper dialogue. I am not interested in simply placing a Catalan symbol beside a Chinese symbol. That would be only a visual combination. What interests me is what happens when two traditions come into contact and begin to change one another," he says.
In one of his masterpieces, My Cherry Tree, Ribalta uses a tree to connect Catalonia and China. The cherry tree in his Jingdezhen studio reminds him of the almond trees near Tarrega, where his father taught him, as a child, to crack almonds with a stone and fly kites. At the same time, it evokes the plum blossoms celebrated in Chinese poetry. The image belongs to both places and also to something more universal: longing, resilience, spring and renewal.
"For me, cultural fusion is not an ornamental strategy. It is a way of understanding identity. I have not abandoned one origin to adopt another. Living far from Catalonia, I have been able to look back at it with new eyes. At the same time, China has given me new materials, techniques and ways of seeing," he says.
Ribalta chose the swallow as a symbol of "a Spaniard living in China". The bird migrates across borders, yet always finds its way back to familiar places. For him, it mirrors his own journey: leaving Spain for China and gradually putting down roots in Jingdezhen. The swallow, like Ribalta himself, belongs to more than one place.
"The swallow remains an important symbol for me because it represents both migration and memory. It travels between places, but it also returns. In My Cherry Tree, the swallows express movement, attachment and the possibility of belonging to more than one place," he says.
"In the future, I would like to continue exploring the relationship between Chinese and Catalan ceramic traditions. Besides, I also want to tell stories about contemporary life in China, not only historical or symbolic stories. These objects may appear ordinary, but they contain important memories about how people live," he says.
liujianqiao@chinadaily.com.cn
