Nigerian-born ceramic artist and founder of Terravia Ceramics, Umar Abdulrasheed reinterprets traditional African pottery through a contemporary sculptural language, working between Nigeria and the United Kingdom to create hand-built and wheel-thrown forms that carry cultural memory through material restraint.
Clay in Nigeria is not a neutral material. It is connected to daily life and communal knowledge, shaped by traditions passed between generations, present in the objects that hold food, water and ritual. Umar Abdulrasheed grew up around those traditions, and they are the foundation everything in his practice builds from.
“My work sits somewhere between vessel and sculpture,” he says. “It draws from the pottery traditions I grew up around in Nigeria, but reimagines those influences through a contemporary sculptural language.”
That space between two forms, neither purely functional nor purely aesthetic, is where the work lives. The pieces move between vessel and sculpture without resolving into either, creating forms that carry the memory of use while operating as objects of proportion and stillness.
The making process keeps that material presence visible. The pieces are hand-built and wheel-thrown, with the physical traces of making left in the surface rather than refined away. Reduction firing and subtle surface treatments enhance the natural qualities of the clay rather than concealing them. Each element is shaped, assembled and carefully balanced to emphasise proportion and material presence over decoration. Because the works are produced as unique sculptural pieces rather than editions, each form develops its own character through the making process, a quality that mirrors the way traditional pottery accumulates meaning through individual use rather than reproduction.
Working between Nigeria and the United Kingdom, Abdulrasheed’s practice contributes to contemporary conversations about craft, culture and what it means for material objects to carry history. His ceramics have been exhibited in galleries across the UK and internationally.
Umar Abdulrasheed is a Nigerian-born ceramic artist and founder of Terravia Ceramics. His practice explores the relationship between traditional African pottery and contemporary ceramic sculpture, with a focus on form, balance and material presence.
From Earth to Form. Hand-built and wheel-thrown ceramic sculpture, reduction fired. Unique pieces. Terravia Ceramics.
