The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum: Elif Uras: Nicaea

Elif Uras – Nicaea

Elif Uras: Nicaea

The paintings and ceramic sculptures of Elif Uras explore what she describes as “shifting notions of gender and class within the context of the struggle between modernity and tradition.” Uras’s sculptures are made onsite in Iznik (originally Nicaea), an ancient town in the Northwestern Anatolia region of Turkey, celebrated for its tile and ceramic production during the Ottoman Empire. Uras’s imagery merges traditional nonfigurative Turkish art with the Western figurative tradition, while also exploring the representation of the female body across cultures.

Working alongside artisans trained in the Ottoman style at the Iznik Foundation in Turkey, Uras takes inspiration from ancient Greek vases depicting male figures farming olives and making pottery—two industries that connect the ancient past with the global present. During Ottoman times, these tasks were exclusively performed by men; now female workers, artisans, and entrepreneurs populate and manage these industries. In response, Uras’s sensuous vessels, which sometimes allude to the pregnant belly, show these authoritative women in Iznik today, placing the female figure center stage.

For The Aldrich, Uras has transformed the Screening Room to resemble an interior courtyard, a prominent feature in traditional Turkish architecture. A functioning ceramic fountain sits in the center of the gallery atop a carpet-like grid of painted tiles. Water and its constant flow, popular symbols of fertility and prosperity, reinforce the exhibition’s primordial focus. In a tiled wall niche, small vessels are placed on a long shelf, a nod to their inherent domesticity. Alongside Uras’s own work, created especially for The Aldrich, the exhibition presents an original Iznik plate dating from the first half of the sixteenth century, on loan from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Iznik plate is positioned in dialogue with Uras’s plates and vessels, some of which incorporate its intricate spiral motif.

Curator Amy Smith-Stewart discusses the exhibition with Elif Uras.

— Amy Smith-Stewart: Before you started working with ceramic (in 2007), you made paintings that had signature surfaces of densely layered applications of molding paste on panel, which bestowed an almost porcelain-like appearance. The imagery in your paintings commonly featured narratives concerning the clash of Eastern and Western cultural ideologies, especially with regard to consumption and excess.

Their polished surfaces and focus on the miniature endowed them with a hyper-acute level of detail that gave off an almost jewel-like intensity, making your movement from painting to ceramic appear to be a natural transition. When did that “Aha!” moment happen, and what brought you to Iznik, the epicenter of Ottoman production?

Elif Uras: I wanted to explore making images beyond the two-dimensional surface. Since my focus was on imagery, drawing, and painting, I thought ceramic objects would be a good fit. When you think of ceramics in Turkey, Iznik is one of the two places that come to mind. The other is Kütahya, a town that rose to prominence in ceramic production after Iznik had disappeared from the map by the eighteenth century.

Iznik is closer to Istanbul, where I grew up among historic palaces and mosques dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, adorned with the most brilliant and intensely patterned Iznik tiles.

Having gone to school and worked and lived in New York, I wanted to reconnect with my homeland. The Iznik Foundation has a history of working with Turkish and international artists and designers. I’m very grateful that I have been able to go back every year.

AS: Can you elaborate on the history behind the Iznik tradition?

EU: There were already established ceramic traditions in Iran and Anatolia before the Ottoman Empire, but the ultimate luxury items for the Ottoman court were Ming Dynasty blue and white Chinese porcelain. There was a desire to imitate this for the local market, plus the growing empire needed more luxury goods for its court and architectural tiles to decorate its monuments.

Towards the end of the fifteenth century, they came up with a kind of stonepaste that was white when dry and strong and durable when glazed, by adding more quartz and silica to the clay mixture. They called it “çini,” derived from the Turkish word for China. Çini refers to ceramic production in two distinct forms, pottery called “evani” and tiles. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, they perfected the blue-white technique and produced mainly pottery.

Then, in the mid-sixteenth century, they came up with additional colors, most importantly turquoise and red. By this time, during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, Mimar Sinan—the most important Turkish architect of all time—was building mosques adorned with these tiles. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the imagery and the designs in Iznik pottery were mostly created by a centralized group of artists and designers called El Hiref, who worked out of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, away from the production locale. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Empire started to decline, and Iznik stopped producing the high-quality ceramics it was known for and the tradition was forgotten. Meanwhile, the work was widely imitated in Europe and coveted by collectors. This kind of cross-cultural pollination, spanning the East and the West, is what attracted me to Iznik.

AS: How did you initiate an enduring relationship with the Foundation, and how did you convince

Elif Uras, Pottery Makers, 2014 Underglaze painted stonepaste; 30 x 16 inches Courtesy of the artist and Galerist, Istanbul. Photo: Barış Özçetin

the artisans there to collaborate on your designs?

Did they ask you to acquire formal training in this highly specialized technique, or did you learn it from the artisans (almost exclusively women)?

EU: I learned a lot through observation and experimentation over time. There is a lot of specialization at the Foundation, as they try to adhere to the traditional model. There’s a group of artisans who only make tiles, others who are responsible for the ceramic ware, a group of women who draw, and others who paint. There is also someone solely responsible for glazing and firing. It did take a while to get used to the materials, but it is important for me to have my hand in there; I wanted to be able to draw and paint on the surface the same way I would on paper and canvas. As a painter, my studio life was very solitary, I made decisions and I executed them.

With this work, there’s a lot of room for deliberation, discussion, exchange of ideas, and trial and error.

Everyone there has been doing this a lot longer than me, so to be able to consult at each step is a wonderful asset.

AS: What is your process when you go to Iznik—does it begin with an elaborate drawing? How do you articulate your ideas, and what is the collaboration like there? When a proposed idea is deemed impossible to achieve, are they open to failure, or is there a certain level of convincing that has to happen?

How do they relate to the contemporary concerns you raise in your imagery?

Elif Uras, Janet (Mihrişah Sultan), 2012 Stonepaste, crackle glaze, ink; 35 x 16 x 14 inches Courtesy of the artist and Galerist, Istanbul. Photo: Rıdvan Bayrakoğlu

EU: From the beginning, I was interested in domestic objects like vases and plates, because of their status as coveted items of consumption and exchange.

I work on ideas for objects, then transform sketches into three-dimensional models and a sculptor friend in Istanbul makes my plaster molds. I want my vessels to relate to traditional forms, but still be distinctive looking. They have always been larger or more irregular in size than traditional forms, so many times I was told that what I wanted to do was impossible, that it would not hold up or fit in the kiln. I even made a chair out of Iznik çini and that was an almost-failure.

Once the mold is ready, I bring it to Iznik, where the stonepaste is poured and then fired once. This is the biscuit or bisque stage, when it becomes a hard porous surface ready to be painted. Most of the time, I draw directly onto this surface in pencil. Then I erase most of the pencil and redraw using a brush and “contour” paint, which only comes in blue and black and feels like a heavier ink. It’s mostly used to draw outlines in traditional Iznik technique, but I find you can also dilute and shade with it. The other colors are applied more gingerly; they are powdery to the touch and very fragile. Then the vessel is glazed and fired again, at pretty high temperature, around 1050 degrees Celsius. A lot can go wrong during these steps, so there is always a chance of failure. I have lost many works during the process.

AS: You must possess really close working relationships with these women, as it has been almost a decade

since you first approached them. The exhibition at The Aldrich could be read as a dedication to the Iznik women. Was that a conscious intention?

EU: Iznik is a quiet agricultural town situated next to a large lake and surrounded by mountains. It’s been around since antiquity and was historically named Nicaea, after a nymph. It is situated in a fertile basin, so the land always produced plenty of fruits and vegetables and most significantly, there are olive trees everywhere. Olive farming and ceramics are commodities and goods of exchange that tie antiquity to the present. The difference is that today women make up the labor force on the farms. There is a stereotypical joke that women toil in the fields cultivating the fruit, the men go to the city and party away the proceeds. Women are also very dominant in ceramic production—the founder of the Iznik Foundation, Dr. Işıl Akbaygil, is a woman, most of the people working there are women. There are other ceramic enterprises founded and spearheaded by women, and smaller cottage industries dominated by women. Thinking back to Iznik’s previous incarnation in Ottoman times, when artists and craftspeople were almost exclusively male, I wanted to celebrate this transformation of gender roles.

Today, Iznik produces wares almost exclusively in the Ottoman tradition, where the imagery is abstract or derived from nature. Historically, figurative imagery is almost non-existent, with just a few plates and vessels made for Greeks and other non-Muslim clientele.

I wanted to bring the female figure in, to try to make visible the invisible, and to celebrate female agency.

On the surfaces of these forms, I tried to tell a story about the production of ceramics. Then the women I work with started seeing themselves in it, which in turn made me think of other feminine narratives.

AS: You look to other ancient sources, like Chinese, Greek, and Roman pottery traditions, as well as major modern art figures like Picasso and Matisse and the contemporary Conceptualist, Sol LeWitt, who also made ceramic bowls and plates. What does this mash up of sources mean to you? And does this investigation stem from an interest in the history and origins of ceramic pottery and its production, the importation and translation of imagery over vast periods of time and cultures—specifically the Middle East, China, Turkey, and Europe—or is there a more subversive intent at play, as the content delves into the past as a vehicle to debate current sociopolitical strife?

EU: I was looking at Greek pottery and noticing similarities with Iznik in terms of surface composition, ornamentation, and banding. The Iznik tradition borrows motifs from Chinese pottery, the clouds and the waves in particular. Picasso is the master of anthropomorphizing the vessel, so he is undeniably a

major inspiration. I have read that both Matisse and Sol LeWitt were inspired by Iznik tiles. I have also noticed the similarities in the curving arabesque lines of Iznik and Art Nouveau. It’s funny how, according to the Western understanding of art history, abstraction is the end-state of modernism. But we always see the masters of Western modernism making ample use of nonWestern traditions in their work, be it Africa for Picasso or Islamic arts for Matisse. My relationship to abstraction is through traditional Turkish and Islamic art. I see figuration as more of a Western influence. These kinds of contradictions and cultural biases around the ideas of tradition and modernism are interesting to me. Turkey is in a continuous struggle between tradition and modernity.

In terms of art history, we have this amazingly rich history of traditional arts. However, modern and contemporary Turkish art developed under a Western influence following the modernist path. The traditional arts like Iznik are still somewhat stuck in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, replicating the greatest hits of high Ottoman design. I was interested to see whether the work could be more contemporary, whether it could speak about our current time, what’s going on around us. I also realized why working on-site in Iznik was so important to me; I could not turn my back on this tradition, so I have at times integrated imagery inspired by Iznik into my work. This struggle between the traditional and the modern is what defines our times; it is what is behind our current sociopolitical strife. Even in Turkey, sociopolitically we find ourselves being torn between the forces of tradition and the modernizing influence of the West; politically and culturally this struggle exists everywhere.

AS: For several years—and certainly for the exhibition here at The Aldrich—you have been focusing exclusively on the ceramic works. The vessels came first and then the plates, and later the tiles. What interested you initially with working in the round? The forms the vessels take allude to the body, in particular the female belly. You have even painted intricately designed bikinis on the ceramics to make them resemble women’s torsos. There appears to be a clash of female stereotypes alive here: the woman with child and the women of the harem. Orientalism vs.

Occidentalism. What does this imagery mean to you and what is it like to present these works in the United States versus Istanbul? Do you feel as though there is work that can be shown here and not in Turkey—how do these cultural differences/conflicts play out in the work?

EU: I wanted my vessels to relate to traditional forms, but still be distinctive looking. I love the curves and bumps of the traditional vessels, and find them extremely feminine in appearance, so I wanted to underscore this by making vessels that resemble the female form in more overt ways. I also wanted to disrupt the traditional imagery by alluding to the female body, trying to unify the form with the imagery.

Elif Uras, Trillion Dots, 2014 Underglaze painted stonepaste; 161/2 x 7 inches Courtesy of the artist and Galerist, Istanbul. Photo: Barış Özçetin

The torso-like vessels came out of that. The abstract motifs and visual language of Iznik almost become like lace or beadwork, suggestively covering certain parts of the body. In a way, these were parodies of the Orientalist gaze or the look of the East made more easily consumable by the West.

In Turkey, the reception would be qualified by our past as well as the present political reality. Most of the prime historic examples of the tradition are found not in Turkey, but in private collections or museums such as the Victoria & Albert in London, the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon or The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Iznik also has a pious sacred quality to it; most of the imagery has meanings associated with the Garden of Eden and spirituality. The most important mosques of the architect Sinan were decorated with these tiles, so it is part of the religious architecture. The main sections of the mosques are the ones most heavily decorated, and these are the sections where only men are allowed to pray. The sections reserved for women are less ornamental, plainer. In Topkapi Palace, the most exquisite tile panels are found in the Circumcision Room; injecting the female body into all this is therefore an attempt to subvert these traditional associations. Also of significance are the neo-Ottoman aspirations of the current government, in both the political and cultural realms. In terms of art and architecture, there has been a revival of Ottoman forms; recently the president suggested

that students should all learn Ottoman Turkish script.

In this environment it is hard to consider Ottoman traditional arts without being prejudiced about this one way or the other. Placing the female figure in the middle of it all is my way of subverting or secularizing this tradition. In the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of political speech attempting to place limits on the female body—an Islamist commentator actually declared that pregnant women should not go outside.

Recently, the president declared that men and women cannot be equal and birth control is treason.

He states repeatedly that Turkish women should have at least three children. The pregnant vessel is a response to this.

AS: The plates and vessels debut your latest technical device, the airbrush. It appears as though you are forging another unlikely marriage, inserting a contemporary tool most often associated with the street, and in particular graffiti, with its illicit connotations, within an ancient archetype most familiarly associated with an interiority. Do you think this could be read as an act of defamation? It also recalls the graffiti (both old and new) commonly found on ancient ruins.

EU: It’s interesting you mention ancient ruins.

Just down the street from the Iznik Foundation are the most magnificent and spooky ruins of old city gates from Roman times. It’s incredible to think that some of those stones are thousands of years old.

Yet they are marked with the most banal graffiti.

The ceramic tradition is also part of this history, and Elif Uras, Front Office, 2015 Underglaze painted stonepaste; 18 x 12 x 11/2 inches Courtesy of the artist and Galerist, Istanbul. Photo: Barış Özçetin

its techniques, methods, designs, and materials are almost identical to those used centuries ago. I wanted to see if I could bring a more contemporary tool into this tradition. In ceramics, airbrush is regularly used in a more industrial manner; it’s very effective if you want to paint something in a flat monochrome. Airbrush is also used to spray glaze on the vessels and plates.

I wanted to see what would happen if I purchased the smallest brush available and tried to draw with it, holding it very close to the surface. I liked the results, especially how the airbrush line and the rectangular brush line looked alongside one other. I also liked that the airbrush was not overpowering or defacing the surface. The glaze that goes over the paint creates more of an equivalency in the surface between the more delicate brushwork and the blunt instrument.

The airbrush line, or anything that is spray-painted, is undeniably associated with street art, and I liked the idea of inserting that into my interiors, especially these vessels and objects that relate to domesticity.

AS: Are the plates and tiles based on existing Iznik molds or are they new forms you are creating, like the large vessels? An actual Iznik plate dated to the first half of the sixteenth century is on view at the Museum.

What is it like to position yourself up against an immediate source of inspiration and to have it here alongside your own objects? Do you think of it as a clash of new and old, or a wedding of past and present?

EU: I made the oval mold because it lends itself to the landscape or portrait format, which makes it easier to draw and paint on. I have not seen any oval

forms in traditional Iznik. The tiles are related to traditional dimensions and made in existing molds at the foundation.

It is an honor to have a prime example of authentic, historic Iznik alongside my work. As I’ve said, traditional Iznik imagery has always been at the back of my mind when I come up with my own imagery.

The intricate spiral pattern of the plate is called Haliç and it’s a famous one. I had always been struck by its lace-like intricacy, so I used a pattern inspired by this on my work, Pregnant Haliç. In terms of the exhibition design, it’s wonderful to be able to draw a line between the past and the present.

AS: Working with tiles as decorative accents, covering the fountain base and the architectural niche, is new for you. Do you see yourself becoming more concerned with the creation of immersive interiors or was this specifically something you wanted to experiment with at The Aldrich as it related directly to the curatorial framework for this series of exhibitions? Or do you think it was a natural progression and one you were already considering or working towards? You used a method of experiential transformation vis-à-vis architectural interventions as a means to contextualize your work. Do you think of this enveloping experience as a greater meta-narrative about your practice at large?

EU: I had always wanted to work with tiles, but my earlier experiments were all failures. I was trying to draw and paint on them as I would on paper or canvas, but my approach was all wrong. This type of work has to be site-specific and somewhat permanent, as it might be destroyed during deinstallation. So I never had the space or the opportunity until now. For this exhibition, I made the decorative tiles as support materials for the vessels and the fountain. I’ve always wanted to combine my vessels with the tiles somehow, so I made tiles to line the surfaces for the fountain and the niche. One of the tiles for the fountain platform contains references to the traditional motif çintemani, which is very prominent in traditional Iznik as well as imperial textiles. The three dots in this motif are said to be a Buddhist symbol, adopted by Ottomans because it projects strength and power. The curving lines, sometimes referred to as clouds, remind me of women’s lips. Another tile is inspired by the form of the breast. Its curving and undulating lines also resemble Art Nouveau designs.

Creating immersive environments through the use of paintings, objects, and other decorative elements has long been an interest of mine. I am also inspired by the ideas around the Gesamtkunstwerk and admire the works of Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna’s Workshop), in particular, the architect and designer Joseph Hoffman.

Plate, Ottoman period (ca. 1299–1923): Islamic Attributed to Turkey, first half sixteenth century Stonepaste; painted and glazed; Diameter 11 ¾ inches Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1966 (66.4.11) Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY

AS: Recently, you produced a mural comprised of approximately 120 wall tiles that reads as or has the presence of a painting. This seems to point to a new course your work might be taking, perhaps a middle ground between painting on panel vs. painting on an object. Do you think this is something you would like to continue to explore, and where do you think your work will jump from here?

EU: For the mural, I looked long and hard at the best examples of unified-field panels from the harem in Topkapı Palace. These panels tell a single story, each piece is part of a puzzle, and there is no repeat pattern.

I was struck particularly by a panel from the vestibule of Murat III’s bedroom from the 1580s. It had double arches and faux marble columns inspired by those found in sixth century Hagia Sophia, near to Topkapı.

These arches and columns were in keeping with my architectural approach, plus the overt Western influence intrigued me. I decided to preserve the Byzantine elements in some way, but also place the female figure at center stage. I wanted the overall spirit of the work to allude to Iznik, yet also be composed of a figurative and abstract language that related more to Western and modernist art.

I would definitely consider this a painting, but the sitespecificity is what sets it apart from more traditional painting. It conflates painting and architecture. It also addresses issues of permanence and destruction.

I would love to make an immersive interior—a walk-in painting using tiles, floor, wall, and ceiling.

Elif Uras was born in 1972 in Ankara, Turkey, and lives and works in New York City and Istanbul, Turkey.

The artist wishes to thank the Iznik Foundation for its support.

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum Founded by Larry Aldrich in 1964, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is dedicated to fostering the work of innovative artists whose ideas and interpretations of the world around us serve as a platform to encourage creative thinking. It is the only museum in Connecticut devoted to contemporary art, and throughout its fifty-year history, has engaged its community through thought provoking interdisciplinary programs.

Board of Trustees Eric G. Diefenbach, Chairman; Linda M. Dugan, Vice-Chairman; William Burback, Treasurer/ Secretary; Diana Bowes; Chris Doyle; Annabelle K. Garrett; Georganne Aldrich Heller, Honorary Trustee; Michael Joo; Neil Marcus; Kathleen O’Grady; Lori L. Ordover; Martin Sosnoff, Trustee Emeritus; John Tremaine Alyson Baker, Executive Director Larry Aldrich (1906–2001), Founder

Cover Elif Uras, Pregnant Haliç II, 2015 Underglaze painted stonepaste; 24 x 13 inches Courtesy of the artist and Galerist, Istanbul Photo: Barış Özçetin

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Elif Uras Nicaea Curated by Amy Smith-Stewart May 3 to October 25, 2015 The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, in addition to significant support from its Board of Trustees, receives contributions from many dedicated friends and patrons. Major funding for Museum programs and operations has been provided by the Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts; the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation; The Leir Chairitable Foundations; the Goldstone Family Foundation; and the Anne S. Richardson Fund.

Generous support for Elif Uras: Nicaea has been provided by the SAHA Association.

Additional support for exhibitions has been provided by The Coby Foundation and The PollockKrasner Foundation, Inc.