Gaya Vartanyan (b. 1989, Tbilisi, Georgia) is a London-based artist working with ceramics as a language of emotion, structure, and memory. Rooted in a background in architecture, her practice explores the vessel not as a utilitarian form, but as a sculptural body — one that holds tension between concealment and exposure, stillness and gesture, intimacy and distance.

Vartanyan embraces raw textures, translucent glazes, and minimalist forms to evoke what is often unseen yet fundamental. She often experiments with glaze development, creating her own recipes to deepen the expressive possibilities of surface and form. Her works speak quietly — not through perfection, but through balance and contradiction. In each piece, she traces the line between chaos and harmony, echoing internal states and lived experience.

Her Canvas collection explores the symbolic power of the vessel as a keeper of emotion, while Equilibrium emerged from a personal search for grounding amid cultural dislocation. Her latest series, Knot, draws on Masonic and architectural symbolism to reflect on the idea of “home” as something built through invisible ties and quiet rituals.

Born to an Armenian–Ukrainian family, Vartanyan studied architecture at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and earned a Master of Arts in Architecture and Urbanism from London Metropolitan University. Her interdisciplinary sensibility brings structure and poetry into dialogue, allowing clay to become a site of both construction and surrender.

EDUCATION

2020–2022 MA Architecture and Urbanism (with Distinction)
London Metropolitan University, UK

2007–2013 Specialist Degree in Architecture and Art (equivalent to MA)
Imperial Academy of Arts (Repin Institute), St. Petersburg, Russia

1995–1997 Art School
Saint Petersburg, Russia

EXHIBITIONS

2025 COR Gallery
Falmouth, Cornwall, UK

2025 INTERNATIONAL YOUNG TALENTS
Iznang , Germany

2024 LE VASE FLEURI
Ruup & Form Gallery, London, UK

2024 THE VASE
AAA Studio, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

AWARDS

2025 Finalist, International YOUNG TALENTS AWARD
Iznang , Germany