Earth on Their Hands: Elif Uras

Galerist proudly presents Elif Uras’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, titled Earth on Their Hands, opening on 16 September, concurrently with the 18th Istanbul Biennial. The exhibition invites viewers to reconsider women’s labour within historical and material culture. For the first time, Uras brings together wheel-thrown and hand-built ceramic works created in New York with slip-cast pieces produced in Iznik – the historic centre of Turkish pottery since the Ottoman era.

Her voluptuous vessels merge the figurative with the abstract: optical patterns drawn from Islamic geometry ripple across sculptural forms inspired by Neolithic clay figurines native to her geography. Through the use of slips, washes, underglaze paint, and gold lustre, Uras creates richly textured, relief-like surfaces that shimmer with layered resonance. 

The exhibition also includes ceramic plates and tablets exploring themes of female labour, communal solidarity, and mutual support – in a context where only 30 percent of women in Turkey are formally employed. Uras traces the historical connection between Anatolian women and gold, reimagining the precious metal not as a symbol of patriarchal power, but as a marker of the invisible and unpaid labour traditionally performed by women. Informed by the prehistoric, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine legacies of the region, she reclaims suppressed histories and amplifies enduring lineages. Gilded female figures populate the surfaces of her ceramics, engaged in acts of caregiving, domestic labour, agriculture, and heritage crafts like weaving and pottery. Uras transforms these undervalued activities into expressions of resilience and resistance, rendering them timeless through mythic form. 

Earth on Their Hands will be on view until November 8, 2025, from 11:00 to 19:00, except for Sundays. 

Main Sponsor | Kale Design and Art Center (KTSM).