×

Subscribe to our newsletter

Highlights From the Previous Week, Partnered Events and Haikus. View our Newsletter archive

The Essai of Massoud and Nawam

Jan 17, 2018

With Essai, an exhibition in Beirut’s Carwan Gallery, the two ceramic artists relent control of their pieces to the unexpectedness of chemical trials

Scroll right to read more ›
Text by Rab Messina
Photography by courtesy of Carwan Gallery

Ask a ceramic artist and they’ll tell you that, for all the certainty required of it, the craft is mostly based on trials. Based on that reality, Mary-Lynn Massoud and Rasha Nawam are presenting Essai, a group of new ceramic sculptures and former works.

The pieces are the result of a long series of trials and material research —from stoneware to glass, iron powder, porcelain and glaze, and their reactions under specific conditions. Instead of engaging in a fully premeditated process and trying to control the outcome, Massoud and Nawam left room for the beautifully accidental.

The resulting set of pieces bear surfaces and shapes that can resemble sea foam, onyx, marble, caramel and smudged lipstick.

Essai is currently on display at the Carwan Gallery in Beirut. This isn’t the duo’s first exhibition together —they’ve been collaborating since 2007, showing their work from Milan to New York, from Dubai to Basel. Massoud trained in ceramics at La Manufacture de Sèvres in France and is currently based in the Lebanese capital; Nawam graduated from the American University of Beirut and studied ceramics both in Lebanon and the United States.

The exhibition can be visited by appointment throughout January and February.

essai_carwan
essai_carwan
essai_carwan
essai_carwan
essai_carwan
essai_carwan
Back

Articles you also might like

Thirty international galleries participate in the 4th edition of the Menart Fair taking place in Paris at the Palais d’Iena between September 15-17.

Spazio Nobile Gallery presents, Nord, an exhibition of new work made between 2022-2023 by Norwegian ceramic artist Ann Beate Tempelhaug. The exhibition will feature a selection of large-scale ceramic sculptural ‘murals’ onto which she makes free-flowing abstract paintings inspired by the dramatic northern Norwegian landscapes and the mystery of life itself.

On a trip to South Africa, Li Edelkoort had the opportunity to visit Andile Dyalvane in his studio and experience the process and ritual that goes into his making. She wrote about his work for our A/W 2022 issue: TLmag38: Origins.