Biography
Anila Ashraf started working with clay in 2020. That's a surprisingly recent beginning for someone whose practice already has the confidence of a much longer career — but it explains something about how she works. There was no gradual accumulation of academic training and studio habit. She came to ceramics directly, through wheel throwing, and the wheel has stayed central to everything she makes. Her studio practice operates under the name LaTakhaf Ceramics. La takhaf means "do not fear" in Arabic — a phrase that functions as both a personal manifesto and a curatorial logic. She works with traditional wheel-thrown forms and then alters them: cutting, collapsing, reassembling, adding specialised glazes and tactile surfaces that push the vessel away from function and toward sculpture. The result sits in the unresolved space between the two, which is where she wants it. At Dubai Design Week, her work was described as "big, bold and eccentric pieces touched with the vibrant hues of various glazes" — work that holds "a juxtapose of valor and serenity," a paradox that is also a pretty good description of the wheel-throwing process itself, where control and surrender happen simultaneously. Central to the practice is an acceptance of imperfection as a structural element rather than a failure to be corrected. Clay fired in a kiln does not always do what you expect it to do. Ashraf has built a philosophy around that — around what transformation looks like when you stop trying to prevent it.
