Art came about almost by chance. During childhood, almost without meaning to, Cristina developed the ability to express herself with her hands. At 47, she lives in Aveiro, the city her parents chose when the atmosphere of civil war haunted Mozambique.
In 1990s Mozambique, when she was a young woman in training, the now-artist came up against some challenges: “I grew up during the civil war in Mozambique and learnt, like everyone, to cope with the lack of many things. My mother spent afternoons doing handicrafts with me and my brothers and sisters. We used various materials, such as paper, leather, glass, seeds, sticks, wires, star-shaped pasta painted in different colours, and we made, among other things, necklaces and bracelets,” Cristina shares.
She was born Ana, but everyone knows her as Cristina. If we search for her trail online, we will certainly find more references to her work. Cristina Bastos is today a jeweller and creates pieces for a brand bearing her name.
From the opening of her parents' shop to the Jewellery course at the Escola Engenho e Arte took only moments: “I had taken a break from my degree at the University of Aveiro and wanted to resume my training, at the same time as my parents were about to open a shop with a very innovative concept at the time – Loja Oriente, in Aveiro – and needed a colleague. I came in November 1996, and we opened the shop in December 1996,” she tells us by email.
Years later, Cristina began making earrings, necklaces and bracelets with sea glass tumbled from broken bottles on the beach, seeds, shells, cowries, leather, metal from paper clips, also using tin wire, copper wire and transistors that her father kept for repairing the computers and television at home. Deep down, the artist, simmering, needed to broaden her working tools, exploring other materials such as stones and nobler metals.
As her art grew, Cristina Bastos began to give shape to something more concrete, and that is where the brand bearing her name was born, which, she says, results from the care she takes in creating signature pieces, always based on the motto ‘Wear your culture’, thus placing Mozambique and Mozambican culture as a path wherever she goes.
Currently, Cristina Bastos's big challenge is managing her schedule. With the shop founded by her parents, she develops pieces for the Bairro Bistrô in Maputo, exhibits at the Hotel Moliceiro, in Aveiro (Portugal), and is developing a partnership with a stone company from Mozambique, in addition to the sales she makes through social media.
“My passion for nature and its biodiversity leads me to create pieces with particular characteristics that refer back to that experience of mine. “When I create a piece, I do not base it on a type of person, but on whether I would dare to wear it. I like what I do, I like having that freedom, and I like my work to show that same freedom,” reads Cristina's own account. Jewellery is, without doubt, her form of expression.
