Rojhane Hosseini

Ceramic is a soft and malleable material that changes into a hard and fragile substance by firing. On the contrary, metal is a hard and resistant material that becomes soft and malleable in the process of firing. Our understanding of facts and phenomena is based on which of their existential layers?

My concern is to challenge the primary superficial interpretations of the matters in our surrounding by making certain tools in the hands of men into ceramic objects, while they seem unusual in the hands of women. These tools are often considered masculine, severe, functional and important, but they lose their functionality when juxtaposed with a feminine and fragile material. Now which of our interpretations define the identity of such tools? Is it our understanding of the material or functionality? Is it the gender backgrounds? ... Which one plays a stronger role?

Maybe our minds need to put the usual interpretations of subjects away in order to perceive other cognitive layers and experience new attitudes in them.

-- Rojhane Hosseini

Rojhaneh Hosseini began her first artistic experiences with ceramic when she was studying handicrafts (ceramics field) in 1997. She first made decorative and urban-related works out of ceramic and then left this field for a while on receiving her M.A. degree in painting. But in the recent years she has been making use of ceramic material in her works with a different attitude and a conceptual purpose. During this period, she is making men’s tools by ceramic. Using colors and motifs (characteristics of ceramic), she is trying to challenge the exclusive, superficial and primary interpretations of phenomena. By the ceramic-based execution of tools which the quality of fragility of ceramic contradicts their nature, and by the combination of them with other materials, Hosseini again challenges definite attitudes towards the exclusivity of gender capacities, either in material or in femininity and masculinity.

She has managed to win the first prize in Iran’s Women Ceramists Exhibition (2009) and the 10th Biennial of Iran’s Ceramic. She has also participated in several group exhibitions, foreign biennials and the International Symposium of Ceramic in Lithuania (2014).

After years of teaching in universities in the field of ceramics and doing research activities in the Association of Iran’s Ceramists, Rojhaneh Hosseini undertook the organization of Ceramic-Based Exhibition in 2014 and held the second Ceramic-Based Exhibition in 2017 under the title Border internationally. Her goal is to establish and improve communication among visual artists in different media regarding the capacities of ceramic. By holding this exhibition, she aims at the application of ceramic material by the artists to express a certain concept in a work of art.