Pregnant Haliç II

Elif Uras is a painter and ceramist whose work questions the role of women in society and engages with the long span of Turkey’s material and cultural past. She focuses on what she describes as "shifting notions of gender and class within the context of the struggle between modernity and tradition." Her imagery merges traditional nonfigurative Anatolian art with the figurative tradition, while also exploring the representation of the female body across cultures. Since 2007, she has become particularly interested in ceramics from Iznik (originally Nicaea), an ancient town in the northwestern Anatolia region of Turkey celebrated for its tile and ceramic production during the Ottoman Empire; there, Uras is working alongside artisans trained in the Ottoman style at the Iznik Foundation. Tasks exclusively performed by men during Ottoman times are today managed by women workers, artisans, and entrepreneurs at the Iznik Foundation. Uras’s sensuous vessels, which sometimes allude to the pregnant belly, such as "Pregnant Haliç II," are an homage to these authoritative modern women in Iznik, placing the female figure at the center. "Pregnant Haliç II" takes its name, spiraling floral decoration, and blue-and-white color palette from a group of 16th-century Iznik ceramics discovered in the Haliç (Golden Horn) neighborhood of Istanbul in the early 20th century.