Breathing Life into Clay
"Eavesdropper" by Shazieh Gorji. Photo: Kohi Marri
Art is highly personal. Either you like it or you don’t. Either it speaks to you, or it doesn’t.
A new series of ceramic art by Shazieh Gorji is likely to win over everyone who is introduced to it. Her raku-fired sculptural ceramics (on display for her solo show at Islamabad’s Rohtas Gallery this month) don’t just speak to you, the individual pieces interact with each other. The necks of the vessels have Seuss-like arcs that stretch and lean and bend. Gorji has breathed so much life into her series that the ceramics, like people, have become social creatures.
The reason for the powerful pull of this series (see a sample of the series in the slide show below) could be because ceramics are more universal than many other art forms: we understand them and their practical purposes.
In the case of Gorji’s work, though, it is all of the above and more. Her pieces are very real. They are organic and beautifully imperfect. They seem human.
And thus, it’s likely that you will find them breaking out of their clay world and speaking to you too.
Details of Shazieh Gorji’s show, “The Lighter Side of.”
When: December 15 – 31
Opening: Tuesday, December 15, 6 – 8 pm
Where: Rohtas Gallery, Islamabad
Gallery timings are 11am to 7pm everyday except Sunday.
"Reliance" by Shazieh Gorji. Photo: Kohi Marri
Her work, in her own words:
“The works have been fired in a raku kiln I built in 2007. Twelve firings were conducted over a period of one week, often with two to three consecutive firings in a day. I have hand mixed and measured all the glazes using local and imported materials. The sawdust used to produce the rich, black smoked effect, a result of reduction processes, has been collected from various woodworkers, and I experimented with fine and coarse sawdust to obtain varied hues.”
- Shazieh Gorji
Click on any picture to begin the slide show.
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