Sanam Emami
FORT COLLINS, COLORADO
With a mind to how collective knowledge travels through artisans, ceramicist Sanam Emami creates platters of layered and repeating floral shapes and colours, reminiscent of a garden from above.
Iranian-born Sanam Emami’s early experiences of immigration shaped her attentiveness to objects as both intimate and collective bearers of culture. With a BA in history and an MFA in ceramics from the New York state college of ceramics, she grounds her practice in both technical expertise and a critical understanding of objects as hybrids of place, influence, and inheritance. Her ceramics draw on the visual languages of Persian and Islamic art, reworking them within contemporary form. She currently resides in Colorado, where she teaches the design and artistry of pottery at Colorado State University.
First encounters with crafts
Born into the political unrest of the 70’s in Iran, Sanam and her family sought refuge - first in England, then eventually settling in Washington DC in the United States. The experience of upheaval instilled in her an early yearning to understand the present-day through the study of history and its tangible remnants - objects. A few years after the revolution, Sanam and her family traveled back to Iran and her mother was able to carry some pieces back to the United States — metalwork, carpets and pottery — which served as anchors of home and identity, while also prompting questions about the lives of the objects and the hands that made them.
Sanam decided to pursue a bachelors in history, where she was met with the teachings of a new cultural history that aimed to rework older concepts, reassessing amongst other representations the previously relegated domain of “women’s work” as significant and necessary for the survival of societies. Her studies prompted Sanam to reflect on her own history as well as those of women from Western Asia, with their deep-history of clay-making.
Ceramic classes taken for personal enrichment steered Sanam in the direction of an MFA in ceramics at Alfred University, New York. Today her curriculum vitae lists numerous solo exhibitions, artist residencies as well as lectures — here amongst at Harvard University — exploring the links between clay-making and cultural history.
Thinking and creating with history
Sanam’s academic background guides her in how she perceives the world around her as well as her own work as a potter - both politically and aesthetically. In the process of forming and designing tableware, Sanam is guided by Islamic, Middle Eastern and Iranian culture and architecture, such as the flower gardens of Isfahan, Iran, with a mind to how particular motifs such as the tulip came to be adapted and represented through Western art. In doing so, Sanam gives attention to her predecessors and the exchange of cultural history in an attempt to reveal the collective knowledge we take for granted in art and craft.
“I wish I could speak directly to these makers from a millennia ago. I try to spend time with their marks and forms, and create work that perhaps could be a bridge between, a way to amplify their voices and to highlight the beauty and poetry of artwork from ancient Iran and cultures across Asia."
Sanam finds value in the idea of treasured crafts containing a collective knowledge, whilst also appreciating the functionality in an object of artistry. Ceramic platters become tangible centerpieces in the scenes of communal gatherings, bearing nourishment in the form of food and shared time.