Imbeleko: Zizipho Poswa on Motherhood, Lineage, and Inherited Responsibility

Imbeleko, Zizipho Poswa’s fifth solo exhibition with Southern Guild Cape Town, presents a new body of sculptural work exploring motherhood, lineage, and inherited responsibility. Opening on 12 February 2026, ahead of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, the exhibition marks a significant moment in Poswa’s evolving practice, one that turns inward with clarity and resolve.

The title Imbeleko references an isiXhosa post-natal ritual in which a child is introduced to their ancestors, symbolically anchoring new life to guidance, protection, and continuity. For Poswa, the ritual is not employed as a metaphor but as a lived framework. It informs her understanding of motherhood as a shared, matrilineal inheritance – knowledge carried through the body and passed between generations of women.

Steadiness and Care

The exhibition comprises a new series of earthenware sculptures, broadly anthropomorphic in form. Rounded and weighty, the works convey a sense of steadiness and care. Each features an outward-reaching structure that Poswa describes as “the body that carries,” creating an immediate physical relationship between sculpture and viewer. Displayed on waist-height plinths, their scale mirrors the human torso, reinforcing an encounter that is as bodily as it is visual.

While themes of ancestry and homage have long shaped Poswa’s work, Imbeleko signals a subtle shift. Earlier bodies of work engaged outward expressions of Xhosa heritage and communal ritual; here, the focus is on the maternal journey as an interior, embodied condition. The act of carrying is no longer performed; it is felt.

In this series, motherhood is articulated not as an individual burden but as shared custodianship. Each sculpture functions as a vessel of collective memory, giving form to the physical, emotional, and ancestral labour that sustains life across generations.