Exhibition Details

iMbewu (The Seed) is a landmark, ten-year survey of ceramic artist Zizipho Poswa, on view at Southern Guild New York. Derived from the isiXhosa word for 'seed'—a potent symbol of transformation, continuity and becoming—the exhibition brings together works produced between 2016 and 2026 alongside three new sculptures that expand upon the cultural narratives, symbols and material investigations that have shaped Poswa’s artistic language. Rather than framing this moment as a point of resolution, iMbewu (The Seed) understands the artist’s practice as something living and generative: each body of work containing within it the possibility of what is yet to come.
Rooted in the lived experiences, ceremonial practices and matriarchal knowledge systems of Southern African women, Poswa’s sculptures are acts of reverence. They honour the tenderness, ingenuity, intersectional beauty and daily rituals of cultural preservation carried by women across generations. Born in Mthatha in South Africa’s Eastern Cape and originally trained in textile design, Poswa approaches clay with an instinctive sensitivity to rhythm, pattern and texture. Retaining the tactility of the hand, each form is hand-coiled and realised through an embodied process that mirrors the themes of endurance and care at the heart of her work.
A recurring conceptual thread throughout her practice is Umthwalo—the isiXhosa word for 'load' and the custom where women carry heavy items atop their heads. Ongoing since 2020, the series has become an extended meditation on the visible and invisible responsibilities borne by women. Drawing on scenes witnessed throughout her upbringing, Poswa elevates acts of carrying into architectural totems that honour what she describes as the “life-sustaining roles that African women play.”
Across bodies of work inspired by ‘lobola’ negotiations, Pan-African hairstyling traditions, ceremonial objects and protective amulets and maternal rituals, Poswa repeatedly returns to a rich repertoire of symbolic motifs—cow horns, braided coiffures, stacked vessels, gathered loads, hair combs, ‘ukhamba’ beer pots and bronze crests—through which the intimate rituals of daily life are transformed into monuments of dignity, resilience and power.
Clay is not simply treated as material, but as archive. Collectively, iMbewu (The Seed) charts the continued evolution of Poswa’s hand while reflecting the generative logic that underpins her practice. Across a decade of committed making, she continues to honour the women of her community as architects and custodians of collective memory and communal life.
This marks the artist’s sixth solo with Southern Guild and her first presentation in the gallery’s new Tribeca space. The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph published by Southern Guild, tracing the evolution of Poswa’s practice over the past decade. Her work is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Princeton University Art Museum, the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, the Schulting Art Collection and the collection of HRH Franz, Duke of Bavaria, among others.
Poswa has participated in exhibitions at institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, LACMA, the Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco), Kunsthal KAdE (Amersfoort) and Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Venice), as well as presentations with Jeffrey Deitch (Los Angeles), Mariane Ibrahim (Chicago) and Galerie Italienne (Paris). Her work is also included in the forthcoming publication Black Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art (2027) by Dr Jareh Das.