Nathalie Khayat was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1966. She lives and works between Beirut and Montreal and has been teaching ceramics in her Beirut Studio from the year 2000 to the present day. Since 1995 she has exhibited her work between the Middle East, Europe and Canada.

While still attached to the functionality of ceramics and the place it occupies in daily rituals, Khayat is increasingly exploring the sculptural aspects of her forms. Her vessels, while being deconstructed, open a poetic dialogue with the clay. Khayat is drawn to unexpected outcomes and to the processes that cannot be controlled when clay pots are shaped, thrown, dried, glazed and fired in an experimental fashion. Tensions between fragility and brutality, between interior and exterior lend it a profusion of unexpected often overwhelming meanings. Born out of a study of the accidents in her craft, the Eye Above the Well series explores ideas of the unexpected, of damage and repair. The large scale porcelain and stoneware vessels resemble works-in-progress, or failed experiments. Each is damaged in some way: cracked, folded, knotted, torn, punctured, collapsed, mended. Individual pots have large dents in them, suggesting the impression of a blow. Some pieces look as though a handful of clay had been thrown on the wet, partially finished work and never worked into the form. Other pieces are marked by splits or seams, as though something primordial were emerging from within.

The size of the vessels, comparable to a person’s torso, gives them a more intimate quality. This was reflected in the making process: all pieces were performed in a single season (Spring 2015) and the relationship between her body and the vessels as she interacted with them closely throughout the season.