Zizipho Poswa | Artist Overview

Born in 1979 in the town of Mthatha in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, Zizipho Poswa studied surface design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. In 2005, she and fellow ceramicist Andile Dyalvane co-founded Imiso Ceramics, whose handmade vessels and tableware have earned the studio an international following. The artist’s first solo exhibition, iLobola (2021), paid homage to the spiritual offering underpinning the custom of ‘lobola’, or bride-wealth – the cow – with each of the sculptures alluding to a specific stage or role player in the negotiation process preceding a traditional Xhosa marriage. Poswa’s second solo exhibition, uBuhle boKhokho (Beauty of Our Ancestors), reinterpreted historic and contemporary African hairstyles from across the continent, many of which were embodied by the artist herself in an accompanying series of photographic portraits. In so doing, Poswa interweaves the personal and historic; situating herself in a vast and ever-expanding network of Black women who continue to self-define and affirm their own standards of beauty.