Ibrahim Said pushes clay to its limits with audacious vessels and sculptures referencing Islamic art.
Ibrahim Said was raised with clay. During his upbringing in Fustat, a Cairo neighborhood known as the home of Egypt’s commercial pottery industry, Said’s father ran a ceramics workshop. There, the artist threw countless pots, absorbing ideas from his father’s artist friends and mastering his materials at a rapid clip. “Being close to him brought me close to clay,” Said says of his father. “Although he never pushed me to follow his path, he made me believe I could make anything I wanted with it.” With his father’s encouragement and his own advanced technical skills honed over hours on the wheel, Said left Fustat in 2002 to exhibit work throughout Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, before emigrating to Greensboro, North Carolina, in 2012.
Said’s complex, gravity-defying works showcase his creative and technical ingenuity and incorporate the rich traditions of Islamic art and vernacular Egyptian pottery. His intricately carved vases reference water jugs made between 900 and 1200 CE, which contained internal strainers to filter sediment from river water, carved with designs visible only to the drinker. By placing the patterns on the outside of his vessels, Said brings the inside out, revealing inner beauty and blurring the boundary between public and private.
Said will present a workshop and demonstration at SF Clayworks in San Francisco, June 21–23, and his solo show From Thebes to Cairo will be up at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York City from May 2 to June 15. American Craft Managing Editor David Schimke wrote about Said’s stunning work in “Inside Out” in our Spring 2024 issue.
The artist works on panels for On the Bank of the Nile.
