Inside, one of the works that immediately caught our eye was Elif Uras’ Rodio Orientali series, four voluptuous vessels animated by optical patterns drawn from Islamic geometry and gilded female figures depicted weaving, farming and caregiving, reclaiming histories of women’s labour. Close by, Darien Arikoski-Johnson’s Nomadic Assemblage, deconstructed amphora conceived as an exploration of ceramics as nomadic storytellers, impressed us with the intricacy of its interweaving geometric, floral and mythological motifs. Mauro Fariñas’ Confabulation III (Amphora) also takes its cues from the classical silhouette of the amphora, its familiar form overtaken by organic, sedimentary textures that make it appear to have surfaced from an ancient shipwreck.

The dialogue with antiquity becomes more spatial in the museum’s garden. Malek Gnaoui’s Essaïda Carthage 1.618 takes the form of a Corinthian column made from red brick and cement, standing in direct conversation with the ancient Corinthian capitals displayed nearby, while George Vavatsis’ Landmarks unfolds as a perspectival landscape of abstract sculptural volumes on pedestals, inviting viewers to move among forms shaped by earth and fire.

At the Decorative Arts Collection of Rhodes, housed in the historic Knights’ Armoury next to the Archaeological Museum, Atalanti Martinou converses with the museum’s renowned collection of Iznik, Kütahya and Çanakkale plates. The only artist presented in this venue, Martinou’s Quatrefoil series of 40 hand-painted and glazed earthenware plates sits among the museum’s historic ceramics with almost mischievous confidence. The installation works because it asks visitors to look twice, to decide which plates belong to the collection and which to the Biennale, only to realise that the distinction is part of the work.

Over at the Armoury De Milly, a 15th-century structure that reflects the strategic importance of Rhodes as a fortified Mediterranean stronghold, the mood becomes more introspective. Against the building’s stone austerity, Ben Wolf Noam’s Memory Maps – Rhodes installation stands out for its vibrant colours and intimate narrative detail. The culmination of the artist’s decade-long exploration of the Cycladic islands, it consists of a series of hand-painted vessels, each one focusing on a different island and depicting places and moments that anchor the artist’s memory, from ancient ruins and vernacular corners to a favourite restaurant, a concert on the beach and a rooster eating from a trash can

The most quietly affecting intervention is perhaps at Our Lady of the Castle, the oldest surviving church in the Medieval City, dating back to the 11th century and bearing traces of Byzantine, Catholic, Ottoman and Italian histories. In its austere interior, Etel Adnan’s monumental ceramic mural Parmi les tilleuls becomes a contemporary altarpiece. Created in the final year of the late Lebanese-American artist and poet’s life, and strategically placed in the church's apse, its colourful abstract Mediterranean landscape seems to open a meditative window.

Finally, in Kleovoulou Square, Meriem Chabani’s A House Awaits converses with the Palace of the Grand Master, which looms over the space as a monument to cycles of power, destruction and reconstruction. Created with Gorbon Ceramics, the installation consists of a matrix of one hundred glazed construction blocks, ordinary building units familiar across the Mediterranean and the Global South, transformed here into objects that hover between utility and preciousness. In front of a palace that has itself been remade across centuries, the work proposes construction not only as a material act, but as an ethical one.