Firing up the kiln, and heading for Miami
Cape Town ceramicist Zizipho Poswa is taking the international design and art world by storm, writes Sean O’Toole
Two years ago, responding to a request to make something big for an exhibition in Cape Town, ceramicist Zizipho Poswa made three large stoneware pieces. Brightly coloured and featuring distinctive surface treatments, Poswa’s Umthwalo vessels abstractly celebrated the resilience and strength of rural Xhosa women bearing loads on their heads. Art collectors cooed, among them Suzanne AckermanBerman. Sold.
Emboldened by the response, Mthathaborn Poswa worked on some more pieces. Where her first works were plump and resonant of the rounded forms of traditional ceramicists Nesta Nala and Lephina Molefe, her follow-up Ukukhula (growth) pieces were svelte and totemic, like the ritual forms in Mpumalanga artist Colbert Mashile’s early paintings.
Thank you very much, said the Los Angeles County Museum of Art when design dealers Trevyn and Julian McGowan of Southern Guild exhibited these works in Miami last December. Two of Poswa’s signature stoneware pieces now form part of the museum’s permanent collection.
Poswa’s journey didn’t end there. In
October she showed a metre-high vessel — it had a spaghetti-like head adornment and body composed of horizontal stripes that reference a ceremonial wrap worn by Xhosa women — at design fair PAD
London. Valeria Napoleone, a prominent London art collector, now owns this piece. Don’t be fooled by this fairytale of instant success: Poswa’s story is one of hard graft and a willingness to get her hands dirty. The only child of a single mother, Poswa grew up between Mthatha and her maternal grandmother’s rural home. “I was a tomboy growing up, playing in the mud, but I left it in my youth,” says Poswa, a mother of two who turns 40 this year. After finishing school Poswa studied textile design at Port Elizabeth Technikon. In 2002 she went to Cape Town with the idea of studying while working. Things didn’t work out as planned and she ended up working at Carol Nevin, a company specialising in handpainted textiles.
“I learnt about patterns,” says Poswa, who went on to work as a textile designer at Sheet Street and sales associate at fashion retailer Foschini. In 2006, Poswa and four friends floated the idea of starting a ceramics business. When the first orders came in, Poswa ditched her salaried job for the unknown. “We had no infrastructure for anything,” she recalls.
Of the original five members, only Poswa and acclaimed ceramicist Andile Dyalvane still form part of Imiso Ceramics. The studio, whose Xhosa name translates as “tomorrow”, was a leap of faith for Poswa. Unlike Dyalvane, who studied ceramics and was mentored by Chris Silverston of Potter’s Workshop, she had no skill with clay. Drawing on her background in sales, Poswa handled the business while learning how to make pots from Dyalvane. Poswa and Dyalvane are both from the Eastern Cape. They met in PE as students — he dated her best friend. Evidence of their contrasting studio output is displayed in Imiso’s showroom and workshop at the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock.
Better known internationally for his unique terracotta and stoneware pieces that reference his rural upbringing, Dyalvane’s commercial output includes ranges decorated with motifs inspired by ritual scarification, Picasso and Cape Town’s harbour.
Poswa’s early success was built on her pinch pots. Previously stocked by luxe New York retailer Anthropologie, these delicate utilitarian pieces with flared lips showcase the ceramicist’s adventurous use of colour and approach to surface.
“My style is very feminine,” says Poswa, whose resume includes a six-year stint as a hair model. “I draw inspiration from tribal art. Some of my commercial pieces are inspired by hair combs.”
Two unrelated events contributed to the tall ceramic pieces Poswa made for Extra Ordinary, a group exhibition at Southern Guild’s gallery early last year.
In 2016, in the lead-up to Dyalvane’s first US solo exhibition at New York’s Friedman Benda, Imiso acquired a new kiln capable of firing larger pieces. The kiln provided
Poswa with the opportunity to scale up. In fashioning her large-scale vessels, Poswa drew on things she saw during a monthlong visit to the Eastern Cape.
‘It was a time to reflect and revisit childhood memories,” she says when we meet at her Woodstock studio. Poswa pulls out her iPhone to show a photo from her Instagram feed. Taken at her cousin’s initiation ceremony in the Eastern Cape, the photo shows a woman wearing an umbhaco-style wrap (beaded wrap) and ankle-length skirt. Translating these culturally resonant motifs into must-have metropolitan objects, says Poswa, involves deep patience on the part of the maker. She initially planned to show two pieces in London last month but one work flopped near the end of the two-month manufacturing cycle.
“Clay is a tricky medium. When it’s wet it looks great but as it dries things can shift and the truth is revealed, cracks emerge.
The drying process is sensitive and unstable. You can’t say you’ve mastered the making until the last stage.”
Poswa’s whirlwind ride isn’t over yet. Southern Guild will be showing two new pieces at Design Miami from December 4 to December 8. Fittingly, given her propensity to change hairstyles every other week, these pieces are inspired by Africa’s vibrant tradition of hairstyling.
One of the works Miami references how Poswa sometimes wears her hair in little balls known as “bantu knots” and “afropuffs” while the other is topped with braided loops that reference an architectural hairstyle documented by Nigerian photographer JD ’Okhai Ojeikere.
It was while modeling hair extensions that Poswa fell in love with traditional hairstyles. A photo of her in braids still adorns the packaging of local brand Frika. This diversion from her day job running a creative company and making desirable sculptural objects blessed her with numerous insights. Like? “Don’t use chemicals.”