Reinata Sadimba

Reinata Sadimba (born 1945) is a Mozambican ceramicist who produces work that originates in traditional Makonde pottery, while incorporating her own techniques and conceptions of femininity and motherhood. She is considered among the most important contemporary sculptors in Mozambique.

Biography Reinata Sadimba was born in Nemu, a village in Mueda, Mozambique, in 1945. She received a traditional Makonde education, which included making useful objects out of clay. However, she eventually found that working with clay allowed her to "say things that I did not know how to express in any other way."

In the 1980s, she collaborated on a rural project with a Swiss couple who had settled close to Mueda, where she was living at the time. This project brought more visibility to her work. However, as the Mozambican Civil War raged, she emigrated in 1985 with her only son to Tanzania, where she lived in Dar es Salaam with her sister Josefina. It was there that she began to exhibit her work in small galleries and artisanal markets.