Nathalie Lautenbacher

Lecture Title: “On Solid Ground”

French-Finnish ceramist and designer (b.1974) producing delicate porcelain tableware, unique ceramic art works and installations. Lautenbacher is a lecturer in design at her alma mater, Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki. IAC member since 2013.

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Adam Chau

Lecture Title: Undustrial Design 

Adam Chau is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and researches digital manufacturing within ceramics. In 2018 he received the NCECA Emerging Artist Award. Solo exhibitions include The Clay Studio, Manchester Craftsman’s Guild, and Harvard Ceramics. International projects include work in The Netherlands, Italy, Taiwan, and China. IAC member since 2019.

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Michal Puszczynski

Lecture Title: “The Modern Approach to Wood-Fired Ceramics”

Michal Puszczynski, PhD (b.1976), is a leading Polish ceramic artist working at the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław, Poland. He creates large-scale sculptures and installations using clay and other ceramic materials. He was the first artist to introduce Poland to ceramic wood-firing techniques originating from the Far East. Member of International Academy of Ceramics (IAC), he has been awarded numerous scholarships and grants, including a 2019/2020 Fulbright Award. IAC member since 2019.

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Barbara Schmidt

Lecture Title: “Thinking with Material – Ceramics in Design Processes”

Barbara Schmidt is a product designer with focus on porcelain, ceramics and glass, head of design at KAHLA porcelain and also works in the field of exhibition design. Since 2014 she is professor for Experimental Design at Weißensee School of Art and Design Berlin.

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Arild Berg

Lecture Title: “Ceramic Practice in Health Research – Making Public Art in a Hospital” 

Arild Berg is Professor in Artistic Research in Art, Applied Art and Design at Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway, with a specialisation in Product Design including the ceramic tile, architectural ceramics and participatory methods in public art.

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Dena Bagi

Lecture Title: “Clarification through Clay: Visualising Meaning-Making”

Dena Bagi is a practice-based researcher and lecturer at the University of Sunderland. She works closely with community members and artists to curate clay workshops, projects and learning/play spaces. She believes passionately that working with clay can have a profound effect on ‘healing’.

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Riikka Latva-Somppi

Lecture Title: “Soil as a Material Mediator: Combining Environmental Research with Ceramic Practice”

Riikka Latva-Somppi is a curator, artist-researcher and educator, working in the interfaces of art, design and craft. She is currently doing her doctoral research in the area of craft and environment in Aalto University, Finland.

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Love Jönsson

Lecture Title: “Fairy Tales and Decadence – Recent Developments in Figurative Ceramic Sculpture in the Nordic Region”

Love Jönsson is the director of Rian Design Museum in Falkenberg, Sweden. He has written extensively on modern and contemporary ceramics in books, exhibition catalogues and periodicals, including Crafts magazine, Ceramic Review, and American Ceramics.

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Priska Falin & Helen Felcey

Lecture Title: “What Is It All For?”

Priska Falin is a Finnish-based artist-researcher working at Aalto University. Falin explores ceramic materials and their processes from the experiential perspective. For Falin, clay is a being with material creating embodied connections through sense perception.

Helen Felcey is a ceramics-based artist, educator and curator. Helen tutors at Liverpool Hope University and is an associate curator for the British Ceramics Biennial. Alongside her work in arts and education, Helen is a trustee of the Gomde U.K. Tibetan Buddhist Centre.

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Neil Brownsword

Lecture Title: “Beyond Preservation: Re-evaluating Intangible Cultural Heritage in the U.K. Ceramic Industry “

Neil Brownsword is an artist and ceramics professor at Staffordshire University, U.K. His practice examines the legacy of globalisation in relation to Stoke-on-Trent’s ceramic industry, and its impact upon people, place and traditional skills.

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Anu Pentik

Feature video on Anu Pentik

Anu Pentik has a long career behind her as a ceramicist and designer, which makes her recent debut as a visual artist all the more disarming in its freshness and vitality. For Pentik, clay is the natural medium for channelling her creative energies. In her hands it lends itself to everything from monumental installations to translucent, whisper-thin sculptural ensembles. She also paints on clay, but she uses many other materials as well.

Tapio Yli-Viikari

Lecture Title: Approach to Northern Ceramics; Arabia – Pentik

Tapio Yli-Viikari is emeritus professor of ceramic art, Aalto University, where he taught for thirty years (1986 – 2016). He has held numerous international professorships, served on multiple juries, and organised several international conferences. Between 2015-19 he was an initiator of the project Ceramics and its Dimensions: Shaping the future. Since 1995 he has been lecturing and working in China. IAC member since 2001.

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Ahmed Umar

Lecture Title: Solace in Clay

Ahmed Umar (b. 1988) is a Sudanese/Norwegian multidisciplinary artist based in Oslo, Norway. He is a graduate of the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Beside ceramics, Umar’s practice includes painting, performance, installation, photography and more. He uses his personal experiences as the foundation for his work and as tools to discuss the silencing, demonizing and compromising of queer lives in both the Sudanese and international context.

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Kianoosh Motaghedi

Lecture Title: Female Iranian Ceramists: From the Beginning of Modernism to the Present Day

Kianoosh Motaghedi (b.1982) is a ceramist and independent researcher in Islamic ceramics based in Tehran, Iran. In 2007 he was awarded first prize in the 8th Iranian Contemporary Ceramics Biennial. Since 2009 he has written extensively on Islamic ceramics and Iranian contemporary ceramists, publishing four books and contributing regularly to exhibition catalogues and art magazines. From 2017-2018 he completed two fellowships with the Louvre Museum and Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris.

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Frédéric Bodet

“Remain Upright”, a film presentation on the IAC Thematic Members Exhibition.

Frédéric Bodet is the curator and vice president of the C-14 Paris ceramics fair, and former curator of Modern and Contemporary Collections at the Musée National de Céramique in Sèvres. He has curated numerous world-class ceramics exhibitions, including the “Circuit Céramique: La scène française contemporaine.” He has been a member of the IAC since 2019.

Suku Park

“Silent Journey,” a portrait of his life as a ceramist and art director, highlighting the impact of his Finnish surroundings on his outlook.

Suku Park (b.1947) is a Korean-born artist and designer in ceramics. He moved to Sweden in 1974 and to Finland in 1984. Over his 50-year long career he has worked as an artist and organised international symposiums, workshops and exhibitions. From 2002 to 2011, he was a professor at Sangmyung University in Korea. As a commissioner of WOCEF he started the Korean Ceramic Expo and Biennale in Korea from 2001-2002. Currently he is an Art-Director of the Arctic Ceramic Centre. He has been an IAC member since 1990 and served as the Council Member representative to Korea from 2014 to 2020.