İdil Sanat ve Dil Dergisi
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Cilt 7, Sayı 51  Kasım 2018  (ISSN: 2146-9903, E-ISSN: 2147-3056)
Nurdan ARSLAN

NO Makale Adı
1542119894 INTERNATIONAL TERRA COTTA SYMPOSIUM IN ESKİŞEHİR CITY OF CERAMIC SCULPTURE

From an artistic point of view, clay has not changed the way it expresses itself creatively. In the latter half of the 20th century clay has become a material used in contemporary art and by totally stripping it of functionality it has, thanks to its plasticity, turned into a vocabulary used by artists.
The adventure of terra cotta’s production process and historical identity that has endured for thousands of years in Anatolia since the Neolithic Age as we have witnessed, resumes and takes form in the shape of an art symposium here in the Phrygian Valley keeping the heritage alive. Now it is ‘reproduction, teaching and bringing it into the future in the context of history-city-culture-memory’ with a Ceramic Sculpture City identity.
The project is realized through the cooperation between the university, industry and the local administration and it has adopted the name ‘Eskişehir International Terra Cotta Symposium’ based on the notion of ‘urban identity-from local to universal’ testifying to cities gaining identity only through their own production.
When artists offer art students the opportunity of an open studio where they can redesign existing culture and artistic experience in a different cultural environment and transfer this to a material and be ‘part of the effort’, there are important experiences to be had. All physical and emotional values that form the urban memory is directly linked to the environment one has lived in since childhood. Everything we touch, see, sense and all the images, streets, buildings, fountains, parks, sculptures we digest are directly linked to the urban identity. Past, present and future.

Keywords: Terra Cotta, ceramic sculpture, culture, workshop