Bilkent Artist Part of Ceramic Exhibition in Poland

Ahmet Özsalar, an instructor in Bilkent's Fine Arts Department since 1996, is displaying some of his ceramic works as part of the The Association of Polish Artists Designers exhibition, "The Journey from Bilkent to Poland" at the Galeria ZPAP. Özsalar, who studied at both the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad and the Pratt Institute in New York, has participated in other group exhibitions held at the Brooklyn Museum and in Egypt, Jordan, Baghdad, Germany, Holland, Georgia and Poland. His works are also included in the permanent collections of museums and art centers in the United States, Jordan, Turkey, Hungary, Poland and Iraq.

Özsalar describes his medium, clay, as not simply a source of form but considers it to be part of the processes of life itself. "Life itself constantly changes and transforms into a memory of the past and the present. In my view, stereotype ceramic pieces produced in the same way suppress the live potential of clay and reduce its ever-renewing structure, which gives birth to unusual expression. By imposing on clay some elements of spatiality and temporality, I refuse the idea that material has an absolute nature. In my works the observed relationship between the body and the memory may be considered as referring to the struggle between the human being and the soil."