'Grab my Bowls': Art of the bowl in Beirut

When Lebanese ceramists Yasmina Khalife, Zeina Aboul-Hosn, and Hassan Kamel Sabbagh gathered one morning in the winter of 2024 to discuss creating a ceramic collective, they didn't imagine they would be on their third exhibition by the summer of 2025.

Clay Stories Collective officially came into being in March 2024, to celebrate Lebanese clay, showcasing its uniqueness and incredible plasticity. Having received a grant from UNESCO, Clay Stories Collective set up the exhibition "From Earth to Table," featuring tableware items entirely made of local clay.

The collective procures clay from the Chouf mountains, where it is extracted by potters for several generations. It results from a passion: it takes time and strength to extract it from the earth's depths, let it soak in water, purify it, and knead it. The result is a golden brown material that Clay Stories Collective wishes more Lebanese ceramists would use.

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The success of the exhibition encouraged them to continue — the audience was positively impressed by the malleability of the material and the wide range of shapes and possibilities it offered.

The trio Khalife, Hosn, and Sabbagh wanted to link everyday objects to the earth, giving them a narrative beyond their mere functionality. "'Earth to Table' was our first attempt to say: look how cool Lebanese pottery is! We can do so much with it!" says Hosn, "and with the success of this first exhibition, we felt like we could spread our wings and wanted to organize a second one." Hosn, a professional film editor and ceramist, exclusively uses Lebanese pottery in her practice of more than ten years.

In December 2024, to bring a little light and hope after the war, the collective organized its second opus: "Light me Up," inviting seven ceramists to create candlesticks and chandeliers. Candles were lit every evening for five days to offer poetry and serenity in an intense daily life.

The bowl in the spotlight

In this vein, the collective decided to organize a third event, called "Grab my Bowls." "We realized we had something there," says Hassan. "As summer approached, we decided our third theme would focus on bowls."

Since the creation of Clay Stories Collective, Sabbagh founded Selsal Collective Studio, a creative space offering ceramic workshops using only local pottery. His clients are Lebanese, expats, young and old, all who have fallen in love with Lebanese clay.

With "Grab my Bowls," the trio wants to consider the bowl as an object and see how different ceramists would interpret it, playing to redefine the boundary between tradition and creativity. It is the intersection of traditional material and contemporary vision that defines the work of these artists, and in doing so, celebrates local terracotta as a contemporary material.

Nine Lebanese ceramists have thus been busy - and happy - in recent weeks creating, modeling, imagining pieces crafted and glazed by hand, exclusively made of this Lebanese clay, each reinterpreting the humble object that is the bowl in their own way.

"It's a very interesting object," continues Khalife. "We are accustomed to seeing and using it without really thinking about it. Preparing for this exhibition pushed us to think of it differently, with a specific intention to want to redraw its contours, proportions, materialities." An architect by profession and a ceramist for over six years, Khalife is increasingly interested in Lebanese pottery and its plasticity.

"Grab my Bowls" is the result of several https://www.instagram.com/claystoriescollective/ months of work, creativity, ingenuity, and love. Representing bowls in all their forms and sizes, questioning form and function. This limited edition, created by Lebanese artists with Lebanese material who take pride in it, will be shown to the public from June 3 to 7.

*The opening will take place on June 3, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Selsal Collective Studio, Arselenian Building, Abdel Wahab el-Inglizi Street, in the alley just after the Albergo Hotel.

For more information, please follow the account @claystoriescollective