Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye is a ceramic artist who lives in Paris. The artist, whose approach to ceramics has always been influenced by time, is one of the widely known international representatives of the simplified glazed form of the bowl. Her signature stoneware bowls, which she has been producing for almost sixty years, are made possible through the oldest ceramic technique named coiling and a wooden-kick wheel as opposed to the predominant methods in ceramics, such as electronic wheels or moulding. Bearing the intimate marks of the artist’s every touch, these bowls carry a sense of stone-like solidity, firmness and permanence due to the high temperatures in which they are fired. Standing on small bases that disappear under the shadow cast by the curves of their bodies, they give the impression of levitating vessels. Their lips are sharp on the edges and reveal the fineness and solidity of their walls. Curving slightly outward, the lips open up the dim void inside the bowl to the outside. The bowls are covered with a monochrome glaze and do not have any surface decoration, except for some which are decorated with horizontal lines that run along or just beneath the rim, to “prevent them from lifting off the ground”. Monumental regardless of their size, these works embody the delicate balance and manifest the tension between density and spaciousness, firmness and fragility, force and ease.
Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye (1938, Istanbul), studied sculpture at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts between 1956 and 1958. She then worked at a ceramic factory in Höhr-Grenhausen and the Istanbul Eczacıbaşı Art Studio. In 1963, Ebüzziya moved to Copenhagen, Denmark’s Royal Porcelain Factory. She founded her first studio in Copenhagen in 1969 and opened her first solo exhibition at Galerie Birkdam in 1971. In 1987, the artist moved to Paris where she currently resides. Her retrospective exhibitions were held at the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Istanbul, and the Copenhagen Decorative Arts Museum. Her works have been awarded numerous prizes and included in exhibitions and collections including; Museum of Decorative Arts (Copenhagen), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam), City Museum (Helsingborg), National Museum (Stockholm), Kunstgewerbemuseum (Köln), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Kunst Museum (Aarhus), Kestner Museum (Hannover), Danish State Art Foundation (Copenhagen), Museé Bellerive (Zurich), Coburg Museum (Coburg), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles), Museé des Art Décoratifs (Paris), Kunstindustrimuseum (Oslo), Princessehof Museum (Leuwarden), Royal Scottish Museum (Edinburgh), Ulster Museum (Belfast).