Ludmilla Balkis (b. 1981 Domont, France) is a ceramicist who has exhibited her work in galleries across Europe, including Paris, Biarritz, and Berlin. Balkis studied fashion and art history in Paris where she discovered her desire to redefine the relationship with the body in society. Before turning to ceramics, Balkis was a fashion designer for many years and worked at Céline in London with Phoebe Philo.

Rooted in her relationship to nature, Balkis’vessels present an evolving dialogue between organic elements and clay. Combining Japanese firing techniques with her command of clothing design, Balkis has defined her own language in ceramics. To further engage in a dialogue with the soil that surrounds her, Balkis uses geological materials that she forages on her daily walks, augmenting the surfaces of her clay pieces with tree ash, stones, sticks, and minerals. As a final step, Balkis often fires her ceramics in a wood kiln, which exposes each piece to flames, smoke, glowing coal and ash, producing a range of natural glazes. 

Balkis approaches ceramics much like she would a piece of fabric. She begins each piece by handbuilding around the emptiness, creating a dialogue with the clay that seeks to fill the void. It is from this exchange and tension that her minimal forms begin to take shape, manifesting into delicate sculptures and vessels that are in static balance and movement much like her natural surroundings—the ancient Pyrenees mountains sculpted by the steadfast hand of time, the trees with their fluid forms, shaped by wind, rain, and light—each forms of perpetual movement.