A Conversation with Ibrahim Said

Egyptian-born, North Carolina-based ceramic artist Ibrahim Said discusses the process behind his large-scale sculpture On the Bank of the Nile with exhibition co-curators Jennifer Zwilling and Elizabeth Essner.

Jennifer Zwilling: Let’s start from the beginning. Where did these patterns and designs come from?

Ibrahim Said: All of these designs came from architecture, the carved clay forms and the wood marquetry bases. When you go to the mosque in Fustat, Egypt—even in churches and synagogues—you will find all the walls are covered with geometric patterns. In thinking about how to make geometry come alive, I started thinking about the movement of the shape itself using that same geometry. Even the furniture of the mosque, like the wood mimbar, is covered with beautiful carvings. This inspired the bases for On the Bank of the Nile.

In the beginning I wasn’t thinking about the Nile at all. But the shape of the bases led me to think about boats, then sailing, which led me to the Nile. In the past ten years, there has been much discussion about the Ethiopian dam on the river, and how it will dry up the Nile in Egypt. The surrounding political issues have rippled throughout the region with outcries that Ethiopia will own the water in Egypt. Without the Nile there is no Egypt.

I remember sitting in the evening by the Nile when I was young. With no one around, quietly looking at the water with the skies clear above me, I could think about life, art—whatever I wanted. I have an emotional reaction imagining the Nile—a place I love—and the sudden possibility that I can’t go there again. That’s why I called the piece On the Bank of the Nile.

Elizabeth Essner: With its scale and complexity, it occurs to me that the risk is part of your process. Is risk essential to how you work?

IS: So many of my finished pieces are not the first, or even the second. In most of my work I know that there is a ninety percent risk of it breaking. As I try different ideas, my techniques change and often I will make something three times before getting just one masterpiece. I feel so lucky with On the Bank of the Nile—three carved slabs of this size working out—this never happens. But good luck like this often comes after much work and much thinking.

The ceramic curves you see in On the Bank of the Nile will not happen easily with any other material. The beauty of clay is that it bends. The gift of what I’m doing, and what I’m trusting in, is that I can make anything out of clay. In this curve, the material does something you can’t control—this is its beauty.

JZ: Did you plan out your patterns? How much was mapped out beforehand?

IS: I took a course on Islamic geometry—three years of working just on paper. When I started this piece, I knew I wanted to make geometric patterns, but clay is very different from paper. I play with geometric ideas, drawing from older designs. Then, working with a compass, I draw my own patterns right on the curved clay.

All three ceramic designs are different. For example, the piece with the six-pointed star has three flowers in the middle and a diamond shape. I drew the design on the clay and altered it while I was working, knowing I didn’t want it to look very traditional. A six-pointed star was my plan, but I didn’t know it would be this exact design.

Since I was a child, I have seen beauty all around me. My father pushed me to learn about Islamic art, and what I have valued is its beautiful thinking tied to culture, and traced to everything in Islam. I try to leave out the darker parts of our history. For instance, researchers and historians discuss how difficult it was in the Fatimid and Mamluk periods -there was killing- but I don’t want to think about that. I want to think about the power of beauty in the artwork.

So, when I’m thinking about Fustat, the historic pottery neighborhood of Cairo where my family lived for generations, and traditional Islamic art -or even Egyptian art from Pharaonic and Nubian times- my thinking is from a vision of beauty. It lives as a dream in my mind. It is what I would like to see, to hear, it is who I talk with, it is my family. It is the world I create and I live within it.

EE: It’s interesting that you’re talking about building this world and at the same time thinking about architecture, and literally creating these spaces with the work.

IS: That’s the power of it. I think about the idea of the mashrabiya, an architectural veil used in Islamic architecture, a threshold between public and private space. With the light going through the ceramic in this work, it will feel like being inside that place.

JZ: In a lot of ways, we all create our own reality. We are all living in different realities and just acknowledging that you are able to make the world that you want to live in, you’re far ahead. It’s the way you look at the world that allows you to be happy or not.

IS: Before I was making art, when I was working with my father making commercial pottery in Egypt, I felt that I had a gift, and that I should use my gift to create something new. Because I have these skills, I can do anything with clay you can imagine, but I am trying to put my own ideas into the traditions. I use rules to change the rules.

JZ: In thinking about Islamic art and in thinking about Allah, how much of this is a reflection of your own religious beliefs?

IS: If you think about Islamic art, you are thinking about flowers, trees, sky, stars— everything on earth. Islamic art talks about the power of Allah, and the infinity of creation; there is no limit to it. Say there are three trees in your yard. Do you know how many leaves are on these trees? You don’t know, but Allah knows exactly. If you look at Islamic art, you will find the power of infinity—of making and not ending.

On the Bank of the Nile has a limit but you can feel the whole world through its patterns.

JZ: It ends only because you cut it, but you can sense that its design is infinite. It’s also making a very abstract concept visual. We use Arabic numbers and thus the whole world is based on Arabic geometry.

IS: That’s the idea of Islamic geometry. This goes back before Islamic art, before Christians, before Jews. People take an idea and build a new idea on top of it. It is all built up from what we’ve learned from those who have come before us. That’s why when you see a repeating form from a thousand years ago it just feels static. But if you build on it, people will go back to its source and see how it moves through time.

*This interview has been edited and condensed.

IBRAHIM SAID, b. 1976

Artist Ibrahim Said was born into a family of potters in Fustat, Egypt, a bustling, age- old center for ceramic production located just south of Cairo. Like generations before him, Said was taught by his father, and soon combined his ceramic skill with his deep fascination for historical Egyptian pottery and Islamic art and architecture. Now based in North Carolina, Said’s current ceramic work joins intricate carving with monumental scale. In 2015, Said was a guest Artist in Residence at The Clay Studio and in 2018, a finalist for the Burke Prize at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. The artist’s work is held in museum collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Said’s awe-inspiring On the Bank of the Nile, a sculptural installation of carved clay and wood marquetry for Making Place Matter, is based on the Islamic mashrabiya, or traditional pierced screen. It reflects both his direct familial roots and larger cultural inheritance.