Yasemin Aslan Bakiri graduated from Academy of Fine Arts at Mimar Sinan University, with a BFA degree in Ceramics and Glass, 1988. She received a Certificate in Communication Studies and CAM diploma from The London Institute, London College of Printing and Distributive Trades, 1992.The artist continued her studies in England at The Surrey Institute of Art & Design University College, specializing in 3Dimensional Design in Glass, 1995.

Bakiri has worked with various international artists such as Annette Meech, Christopher Williams, David Taylor. Since 1986, her work has been featured in exhibitions and art events and held in museums and private collections worldwide.

Bakiri is a visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts in the glass department and Industrial design department at Anadolu University. She was the founder of a Glass Art center called ‘Camhane’ from 2005 – 2023 in an historical building in Balat, İstanbul (the Golden Horn).

Specializing in sand-cast glass techniques, Bakiri uses ideas relating to the natural world, nature as a theme with simplicity and dynamism. In her work she uses timeless elegance to provoke a powerful sensation of colour and movement. Bakiri is interested purely in the spontaneous reactions of the glass, using different materials in her works, wires and hand-woven metal meshes, which she and her mother knit by hand with various metals threads such as silver, copper, stainless steel.

The artist rendors the juxtaposition of the cold, hard nature of metal with the transparent, breakable and sensitive characteristics of glass. She successfully interprets the splendour of the Ottoman Empire in contemporary forms to portray the fluidity and purity of glass and her metal-weaving technique.

The “Glass Kaftans” are contemporary sculptures to historical references. They create an unparalleled visual game in our minds through the force of the timeless mediums of glass and metal.

Aslan Bakiri’s glass sculptures are made from layers of hot glass formed manually. She works spontaneously to create the forms before giving the glass the chance to cool.

She states, ”The universe is so endless that is not possible to interpret it – just like glass; I love glass. I keep on discovering what a versatile and interesting material it is. Glass when sculptured presents itself in the most beautiful yet subtle forms of ray.”

The artist’s GLASS ROBE and KAFTAN Series were acquired by international collectors at Christies Dubai and London. Her works have also been featured in Masterpieces of the Farjam Collection – a Four Volume Journey Through Islamic and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art published by Yale University Press, London. In addition, Bakiri’s works are also in the collection of the Al Thani Family among numerous others.

Bakiri’s works have been exhibited throughout the world in museums, art fairs and galleries from Istanbul to Chicago, New York, London, Luxembourg, Stockholm, Oslo, Paris, Helsinki among numerous others.