Marea Hildebrand (b. 1989) is a Zurich-based ceramic artist whose practice unfolds at the intersection of material devotion, embodied knowledge, and emotional resonance. She holds an MA in Transdisciplinary Studies from the Zurich University of the Arts, where she also served as Director of the School of Commons—an international platform dedicated to peer learning in arts and culture. Alongside her studio practice, Hildebrand has curated exhibitions and conferences internationally and has served as a juror for art and design prizes.

A self-taught ceramicist with a background in painting and textiles, Hildebrand works primarily with black stoneware clay, employing the coil-building method to create vessels and sculptural forms that can reach nearly two meters in height. Each work is hand-built and fired multiple times, with surfaces meticulously painted, etched, or notched through rhythmic gestures that unfold over days. Time, in her practice, is measured through repetition, interruption, and return.

Her works—shaped by inspirations drawn from Japanese and Korean ceramics and the philosophy of wabi-sabi—embrace imperfection, transience, and weight as sources of presence and calm. Hildebrand describes her sculptures as emotional surrogates: not representations of the body, but vessels that carry longing, grief, and energy beyond the self. Through deliberate slowness and tactile intensity, her practice becomes a means of quieting thought, allowing the hands to think and matter to speak.

Hildebrand’s expanding practice includes upcoming exhibitions in Berlin and New York, as well as large-scale commissions in Saudi Arabia.