Ayse Zelal Tuğrul was born in the southeast of Turkey, upon the ancient lands shaped by the Tigris and the Euphrates, before pursuing her studies in Istanbul, Boston, and Milan. Trained in both civil engineering and architecture, she unites structural rigor with a distinctly artistic sensibility.

Her works are wrought entirely by hand, arising from an intimate and unmediated dialogue with matter itself. Her practice unfolds as an inquiry into the metamorphoses of materials, where temporality, process, and form are inextricably bound. Subjected to the slow alchemy of aging, oxidation, and other natural phenomena, each piece undergoes a becoming, capturing the fragile equilibrium between permanence and transience.