ANTONINA OBRADOR
WE LOVE WOMEN
PHOTOS BY CLAIRE O'KEEFE
In 2023, the last remaining bookstore in the southeastern Mallorca town of Felanitx closed for good. “I was indignant,” recalls Antonina Obrador, who had grown up down the street from the bookstore (a street too narrow for most modern cars) in her mother’s ceramics studio, Call Vermell. But then again, Antonina had also once longed to leave.
“Being born in a town in Mallorca in the 90s, the winters were long and cold, and I always dreamt of going away,” says Antonina. She was a cinephile and wanted to become a movie director, and when the time came, she moved to Barcelona to study film. More than ten years went by; she worked in advertising and made fashion films to make ends meet until realizing that if she kept waiting for the perfect time to make a film, it may never come. At age 30, Antonina moved back to Mallorca to produce her opera prima. The process took five years and an enormous toll. When the feature, Quest (2023), was finally released, Antonina felt depleted. She thought about the Catalan word empenta— “It means: I can handle anything. I have a thousand ideas, I find solutions, I never have to wait for anybody to get things done,”—and how the film industry had completely drained her of that fierce, inborn drive.
Antonina had resettled in Felanitx and was helping her mother in Call Vermell, making ceramics and nursing her creative instincts back to life, when the bookstore closed. She thought, “Why am I always the one who complains and never the one who does something?” She and her partner now also had a son. If they were going to start over in Felanitx, Antonina decided, “We need to build a town that we like. For him.”
Call Vermell’s window onto Felanitx’s Carrer Major now displays ceramic sculptures by Antonina’s mother Maria Ramis, but also a woolly canvas, an AI-generated photograph, and a pair of felted chairs—three artworks from a new group exhibition on textile art. When Antonina is not busy teaching ceramics, filling online orders, or throwing at her wheel, she’ll guide visitors to Call Vermell’s courtyard and walk them through her curated show. She’ll explain how the delicate weaves suspended from the decks above are made mostly by women, how they relate to motherhood and the healing power of craft. Then she might excuse herself to prepare for a book launch. Call Vermell is now half atelier, half bookstore, home to Antonina’s handpicked universe of novels and poetry books, books on art, ceramics, design, and photography.
And alongside Maria’s sculptures, Call Vermell now also sells ceramic tableware created by Antonina herself. Antonina’s return to ceramics has reconnected her with her island, her mother, and even her grandmother. “My grandmother was a cook,” she smiles. She loves how some people in town will still say to her, “Oh, you are the granddaughter of Apolonia,” followed by, “you know, she was the best cook.” “She was a very warm person. She hosted everyone,” recalls Antonina, and summons another word: joia, Catalan both for joy and for jewel. “The jewel of living,” she says.
“I decided to make my functional ceramics a bit as a way to reclaim the beauty of setting the table,” she explains. “Of sitting down to eat for five hours.” Antonina rejects the on-the-go culture of the New York bagel, even of the quick Spanish tapa, and defines her eating rituals as more Mediterranean than anything else.
“I think it also comes a bit from my parents, where there was always an obsession with the beauty of taking care of things. Of not needing to be rich to live in abundance.” Most of all, Antonina stands against a culture of hyper consumption. “I think it’s better to have fewer things, of very good quality. And I understand quality as being made by a human. There is nothing of greater quality than seeing the humanity behind an object.”
In that sense, Call Vermell is a deeply human project. “In the audiovisual industry, I spent many years feeling like I was giving a lot and receiving little. Here, it’s been a year and a half, and all the time, I have a positive return. Which doesn’t mean it’s financial. It’s creating a network in which you feel super supported, you feel loved, you feel like what you are doing is reaching people.”
Antonina is someone always buzzing with ideas for new projects: exhibitions to curate, photobooks to edit, and even films to make down the line. But in Call Vermell, she has found a comfort and confidence in lifting other artists as well. “It’s more about managing a team and seeing something as a collective, rather than as me, an individual.” And as visitors of all ages trickle in through the open door, mingling and claiming their spots for the evening’s literary event, it’s clear that Call Vermell is in fact lifting the entire community—with art, and with empenta.