Andile Dyalvane's iNgqweji explores nature's communal structures at Southern Guild

Southern Guild presents iNgqweji by Andile Dyalvane, a solo exhibition of earthenware, glass and copper sculptures at their Cape Town location running from November 22, 2025 – January 29, 2026. Five years in the making, iNgqweji—meaning ‘bird’s nest’ in isiXhosa—marks an expansion of Dyalvane’s practice into large-scale sculptural installation. The art exhibition draws on his ongoing interest in creating communal spaces imbued with spiritual intent. As Southern Guild notes in an official release, the works aim “to reawaken the senses, reclaim indigenous knowledge and restore the symbiotic connection between human beings and the natural world”.

For iNgqweji, the South African artist constructs immersive environments composed of floor-based and suspended ceramic forms. These installations function as shared, spiritually charged spaces. “He situates his art-making in this web of interconnection”, Southern Guild explains in an official release, “weaving together the teachings of Xhosa cultural guardians, his observations of plant and animal intelligence and an extra-sensory awareness of life beyond the terrestrial plane.”

Rooted in his philosophy of spiritual ecology, the contemporary art exhibition incorporates light and sound, the result of collaborations with master practitioners including composer Dr Nkosenathi Koela, glassblower David Reade and blacksmith Conrad Hicks. The immersive installations draw inspiration from deserts, forests and caves, and teem with biomorphic forms, vivid colour and tactile materiality.

iNgqweji originated with a pilgrimage undertaken by the contemporary artist to honour the late Zulu Sanusi Credo Mutwa, whose teachings remain a vital conduit for the rearticulation of precolonial African consciousness. Together with fellow practitioners and cultural custodians, Dyalvane journeyed through the Karoo, crossed the Orange River and travelled to Mutwa’s home in Kuruman in the Northern Cape. Along the way, deep attunement to landscape—digging for clay, observing birds, listening to sound and walking barefoot across the earth—became an essential part of the creative process.

A defining influence on the exhibition was Dyalvane’s encounter with the monumental nests of social weaver birds, complex communal structures housing hundreds of individual chambers. “In their complex architectural structures, Dyalvane noted the birds’ innate design skills and the amplification of intent that comes from shared vision. The flock’s communal action and adaptability mirrored that of the pilgrims themselves – long-time creative collaborators, amagqirha (traditional Xhosa healers) and practitioners of sound, song, dance, image and words,” elaborates Southern Guild.

Sound plays a vital role in the exhibition. Compositions by Koela, based on bird calls and environmental recordings, are embedded within select works, highlighting how African music has long echoed and transformed the voices of the natural world into cultural memory.  iNgqweji embodies what Credo Mutwa described as ‘the mother mind’: non-linear, expansive and connective.

With iNgqweji, Dyalvane celebrate the intelligence of nature and the power of collective making. “In this body of work, Dyalvane surveys the dazzling display of our living world and, through the process of making, emerges himself anew,” concludes Southern Guild.