Isis Dove-Edwin

Isis Dove-Edwin’s practice engages clay as a time-based and performative medium through which labour and memory can be understood and transformed. Working within the ceramic language of materiality, she examines clay’s capacity to document lived experience while tracing the movement of cultural objects through histories of displacement and redefinition. Drawing influence from West African and Nigerian ceramic traditions, including domestic coiled terracotta pots, traditionally made communally by women and later absorbed into colonial museum collections, her work reflects on how meaning can be altered due to removal and reclassification. Through subtle disruptions of form and surface, Dove-Edwin activates clay and ceramics as a mode of embodied storytelling, creating works that speak across time as future artefacts, while quietly challenging inherited ethnographic frameworks.

Born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1963, Dove-Edwin earned a BA in Ceramic Design at Central Saint Martins in 2021, and completed an MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art in 2023. Between 2023 and 2024 she took part in the International Artist-in-Residence programme at the Taoxichuan Art Centre in Jingdezhen, China. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions including Crossing Continents at TAFETA Gallery, London (2024), and in group exhibitions such as Towards the Sun at Siegfried Contemporary, London (2025); Borders in Flux at Quimo Gallery, Jingdezhen, China (2025); and Gate of Horns, curated by Hettie Judah at Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate (2025). Dove-Edwin lives and works in London.