Southern Guild: Design Miami

L-R: Andile Dyalvane, Nomgqabazo, 2024; Ben Orkin, Gathering Place, ca, 2023; Belinda Blignaut, Resident Boomslang, 2024

Southern Guild will return to Design Miami in December with another curated showcase of African art.

Running from 3 to 8 December, the new show will feature pieces by twelve African artists who are redefining the global ceramics scene. The presentation will explore the medium’s ancient roots while highlighting innovative perspectives on form, technique, symbolism and function. Featured works will include furniture, sculpture and vessels by leading ceramic artists, such as Belinda Blignaut, Andile Dyalvane, Madoda Fani, Ian Garrett, Katherine Glenday, King Houndekpinkou, Michal Korycki, Justine Mahoney, Chuma Maweni, Jabulile Nala, Ben Orkin, and Zizipho Poswa. Additional pieces by Rich Mnisi, Jesse Ede and Ange Dakouo will also be exhibited.

Ceramics hold a distinctive place across the African continent, standing as one of its most enduring and culturally significant art forms. Ceramic objects reflect advancements in technology, shifts in belief systems, ritual practices, aesthetics, and everyday life, offering insight into changes in geography, history, politics, and society. In Africa, ceramics provide a tangible connection to pre-colonial culture and its often underrepresented narratives.

As Pablo José Ramírez, curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, notes: “It is not by chance that brown, diasporic and indigenous artists are connecting to this material. It’s because that connects us to something deeper in ourselves and our histories. The emergence of ceramics in contemporary art responds to the necessity of bringing these stories to the forefront.”

With its profound connection to land, ecology and humankind’s origins, clay is an energetic and ancestral lifeline for the artists in Southern Guild’s exhibition. King Houndekpinkou – whose ritualistic vessels use clay sourced from Paris, Benin and Japan – describes it as “the oldest, most profound encyclopaedia”. The medium is a materialisation of his animist beliefs and syncretic worldview, which blends Japanese Shintoism and Beninese Voudou. “It has absorbed all the knowledge of the world and from humanity. Each vibration is through time. Everything that has happened, each conversation, is encapsulated in clay. It’s the ideal source to search for answers for who I am,” he notes.

The anthropomorphism that is intrinsic to this age-old craft form echoes throughout the vocabulary of forms on show at Design Miami, as the exhibition seeks to expand the medium’s applications while honouring its deep roots as a life-sustaining vehicle of expression.

Design Miami will run from 3 to 8 December 2024 at Convention Centre Drive and 19th Street, Miami Beach. Southern Guild will be exhibiting in booth G28.

Contact: Southern Guild