Samina Mehar | Home is Where the Heart is

Samina Mehar is an emerging Canadian ceramic artist, engineer, and former sustainability consultant whose work explores the relationship between faith, memory, identity, migration, and belonging. Through hand-built ceramics, she creates contemplative pieces that bring
contemporary design together with traditional craftsmanship. Her work draws inspiration from Islamic art, geometry, architecture, nature, and personal spiritual journeys.
Working primarily with stoneware and porcelain, Samina uses carving, impressed and layered textures, glaze, and selective gold accents to create surfaces that invite quiet reflection. Her background in engineering and sustainability influences her attention to material, structure, light, balance, and meaning. She believes ceramic objects can carry stories, preserve memories, and become vessels for deeper conversations about the human experience.
Following her recent Hajj pilgrimage, her work has increasingly explored home, impermanence, longing, healing, and spiritual return. Through Soul Meraki Life, she creates ceramic art that encourages viewers to pause, reflect, and reconnect with what they continue to carry within.

 

Home Is Where the Heart Is explores home not as a fixed place, but as something we carry within us. The tall architectural form is hand-built in clay and carved with geometric patterns inspired by Islamic art and the visual language of the places that have shaped my sense of belonging. Its dark, layered exterior reflects the passage of time—the places we leave, the memories we carry, and the experiences that gradually become part of who we are. In contrast, the interior is finished in gold. When illuminated, warm light emerges through the carved openings, transforming the solid ceramic walls into patterns of light and shadow. The gold is intentionally hidden within the form: a metaphor for the heart, where love, memory, faith and belonging reside even when they cannot be seen. The work reflects my own journey through different homes, cultures and stages of life. It asks a simple question: What remains when the physical places we call home change? For me, the answer is the light we carry within. Home is not only where we live. Home is where the heart recognizes its belonging.