By Rima Suqi
South African ceramist Andile Dyalvane is a widely celebrated artist across the continent, but he still finds his creative inspiration (opens in a new tab) from his ancestral home about 500 miles east of his studio in Cape Town.
The 42-year-old artist creates complex, dramatic stoneware pieces—vases, bowls, chairs, and sculptural objects—many with abstract designs and tribal markings influenced by his native Xhosa culture. For “Ithongo (opens in a new tab)” (Ancestral Dreamscape), his next show at Cape Town’s Southern Guild (opens in a new tab) gallery in December (which will then travel to New York’s Friedman Benda (opens in a new tab) gallery next year), he created 20 chairs with different symbols representing concepts like farmer, shaman, or the moon. The emblems came to him in “very vivid visions,” Dyalvane says, and represent that which he believes his community is losing due to the influence of Western culture and migration to South Africa’s urban areas. “These are messages from my ancestors,” he says. “They are helping us to remember. I am using this language, these symbols to communicate in shorthand.”
