Heads up: Artist is firing up a ceramic storm: Zizipho Poswa’s new series of ceramic works celebrates black women via an expressive abstract language
Her distinctive ceramic works have struck a chord internationally. US museums have been acquiring her work and she has become one of Southern Guild’s most prominent artists. There are waiting lists for her works, which come with a dazzling price tag.
One of the collectors she was excited to meet was the legendary American fashion designer Donna Karan, who bought two of her works last year. Poswa was also thrilled to learn that Mark Shuttleworth, the South African entrepreneur, acquired an artwork. She wanted to wear each of the hairdos and experience their “power”, so to speak, firsthand before turning them into clay sculptures.Symbolically, this activity allowed her to embody the history and the line of women that came before. On an aesthetic level, it allowed her to come to grips with the formal qualities of the hairstyles, reading them almost from the inside out.
Poswa couldn’t resist stopping in at one such place and pointing out that she was the model and showing the hairdressers images of the works she has gone on to create. Another important influence driving this body of work and the Magodi series is linked to the fact that one of her studio assistants is a trained hairdresser.
Up until recently, perhaps prior to ceramic art being more readily regarded as art, Poswa has mostly been regarded as a designer rather than an artist. They got to work immediately, opting to work with clay and, as the adage goes, “they never looked back”. She represented ilobola via a series of vessels adorned with bronze-cast horns referencing the cows that were traditionally used in the bargaining process.
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