Salem Jawhar’s vision helps him to give shape to his talent

Only the very lucky get to take home an intricate piece by this ceramic artist

Emirati ceramic artist Salem Jawhar. Courtesy National Pavilion UAE

Salem Jawhar’s ceramic work, which he calls a “passionate hobby”, is not produced to earn a living or for financial gain. While he has been honoured to gift sheikhs with his ceramic works when they have asked, he has never sold a piece, nor does he plan to.

“This art is not to make money for me,” he says. “I create each piece to please myself and the vision I see in my head. It is my ambition that one day, I will have a private museum where I can display all my works from the past years, as an example of the great culture of the UAE. But this requires a lot of support.”

Until then, Jawhar will continue seeking inspiration wherever it comes from.

“For example, when I am near the sea, anything I find, maybe a shell or some driftwood, captures my attention and I start flowing with ideas, changing the idea and adapting it to create a piece of art that speaks to me and hopefully inspires others.”

The 58-year-old Emirati artist from Ras Al Khaimah has just returned from a family trip to Georgia, where he rented a bus to take his wife and children to the villages nestled in the Caucasus Mountains and beaches along the Black Sea.

“I travel a lot, always with my family, but it is very important for me to travel,” he says.

“Travel helps open my eyes and gives me inspiration; I get to see new environments and it helps me create.”

Out on the international road, Jawhar always takes hundreds of photographs of anything that catches his attention.“Then when I relax back home, I take my time to look through these pictures slowly, one by one, and the ideas start coming.”

One of the UAE’s foremost ceramists, Jawhar is credited with establishing ceramic art as part of the fine-art curriculum in Ras Al Khaimah.

“I made sure ceramics is taught in art classes across all the schools in the emirate,” he says.

For decades, he has worked in the Ministry of Education’s art department in Ras Al Khaimah, after his return from studying ceramics in Baghdad in the late 1970s.

In 1981, Jawhar held his first exhibition of ceramics in the UAE and one of his first pieces, entitled Al Ataa' (Giving) and created that year, is on display at the 56th Venice Biennale at the UAE Pavilion.

“As a young boy, I loved playing in mud,” says Jawhar, laughing at the memory.

“It sounds strange, I know, but I would make shapes in mud for hours. My art teacher in school noticed and said I had a talent. He insisted that I pursue art as a career and said I have to go into sculpting or ceramics, but I picked ceramics because I always loved mud. And my parents didn’t mind; even back then, they encouraged me.”

Soon after his marriage in the early 1980s, Jawhar sectioned off an area in his Ras Al Khaimah villa to create a studio.

“I go to work from 7.30am to 2.30pm, then after a short rest at home, I go to my studio from mid-afternoon and work for hours,” he says.

He has no shortage of ideas, but it takes time to choose what to work on, and develop them into actual concepts.

“I need to live with it for a while, think about it, see how it translates to the environment around me or to my culture or heritage. Then I will sketch it using a lead pencil. Then I will stare at it and take the time to think and see if I should create a ceramic piece.”

Almost everything in his studio has been imported from the United Kingdom, right down to bags of soft clay.

Unlike UAE clay, which begins to melt in the oven at 600°C, UK clay can handle kiln temperatures between 1,200 and 1,400°C.

"First I form the piece, let it fry, then put it in the kiln for eight hours, at around 950°C. Then I begin to glaze it and paint it. Colour is very important for me and it brings the piece alive," he says, as evidenced by the bright colours used on his ceramic piece, Al Tajanos (Homogeneity), currently on show at Venice.

“After painting, the piece goes back into an oven of minimum 1,100°C for 10 hours, and after that, it is completely weather-proof. You can put it anywhere, in any environment, and it will survive.”

When the call came to exhibit his work in Venice, Jawhar was honoured. “We are from the old guard,” he says. “All Emirati artists who are showing in the biennale are the early artists, whether painters or sculptors or ceramists. I chose pieces that cover all my different periods of working with ceramics, from 1981 until today. I wanted to show different representations of my work, which also represent the UAE.”

• 1980 – Today: Exhibitions in the UAE runs as part of the 56th Venice Biennale until November 22. Fifteen Emirati artists are displaying their works in the UAE Pavilion at the biennale