Southern Guild Cape Town is pleased to present iMvelaphi, a solo exhibition of functional artworks by South African ceramicist Chuma Maweni, opening on 14 November, 2024 (until 27 February, 2025). The artist’s first solo exhibition, iMvelaphi is also Maweni’s largest collection of handcrafted furniture, lighting and vessels to date.
This body of work is a meditation on Maweni’s familial and cultural origins, drawing links between the cyclical expansion of life and the spiritual symbology at the heart of his own studio practice. The exhibition’s isiXhosa title translates to “where I come from”, encompassing both one’s literal birthplace and the totality of biographical experiences that have formed one’s identity. In looking back, Maweni considers not only his personal trajectory growing up in the rural Eastern Cape, but his evolution of ceramic forms as well. Both are bound by the reflexive rhythms of circularity – the idea that changes emanate and growth ripples out from a central point, looping back and echoing outwards rather than proceeding in a linear progression.
Born in 1976 in Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape, Maweni moved with his family in the 1980s to KwaPayne village in the rural area of the then Transkei to escape the upheaval of anti-Apartheid riots. He traces his craft to his earliest memories sculpting clay bulls on the muddy riverbanks, before going on to study ceramics at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and graduating in 2002.Since opening his own studio in Cape Town in 2016, Maweni has cultivated a thriving practice marked by technical discipline and creative refinement. His journey into ceramic furniture was set in motion with his burnished and smoke-fired Tear Drop Canister series, which exemplifies the purity of form and flawless sense of craftsmanship that defines his work today. The lidded canisters led to the creation of larger vessels whose natural extension was his iconic Imbizo table and stool set, themselves giving rise to a larger family of related stools, plinths and tables in black stoneware clay.
Source: Southern Guild
