Kaashif Ghanie was our Artist-in-Residence from April-May, 2024 as part of the Ceramic, Glass, and Enamel Arts TD Residency for Black, Indigenous, and Underrepresented Peoples and Communities.
Kaashif Ghanie, Grandma’s Recipes, 2024.
About the Artist
Kaashif Ghanie, Grammar of War Remnants, 2022
Kaashif Ghanie, Square Karahi, 2024.
Kaashif Ghanie
Kaashif Ghanie -or Kaas, is a first-generation mixed Guyanese Canadian Muslim born in London, Ontario the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe. Ghanie is a Beal-art Alumni and completed a bachelor’s degree in Ceramics and a Minor in Art History at NSCAD University in Kjipuktuk/Halifax in 2016.
Post-graduating, he completed the Centre for Craft AIRCRAFT Residency (2017-2018), the CEEDS Business program (2019) and CFAT Mentorship scholarship (2019-20) in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. Both experiences have helped him launch his contemporary ceramic artistic practice and his functional Co-pottery business, KG Ceramics.
Ghanie is one of the three ceramic artists working and operating the ceramic studio in the Wonderneath Art Society.
Artist Statement
Kaashif Ghanie makes and sells functional pottery through his business, KG Ceramics, builds installation pieces using vessels in the multiples and wheel throws large-scale pots. He uses motifs from patterns in family prayer rugs and recontextualizes them onto the surfaces of his pottery to create a dialogue and discourse for contemporary Muslim pottery.
The large-scale pots and the installations of multiples are vehicles to express lived experiences dealing with racism and Islamophobia as well as addressing and bringing awareness to global issues and atrocities of cultural genocide towards Muslims. Through Ghanie’s public exhibitions of his sculptural pottery, which reference Historical Islamic forms, Ghanie encourages community members to speak their truths from their own experiences. He hopes that his works fortify their resilience.
Kaashif Ghanie, Home (Alhambra), 2020.