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Lot Essay
‘I am thrilled to contribute a work towards MOWAA and support an initiative aimed at preserving and protecting West African arts and culture. I believe so deeply in the power of cultural knowledge exchange and compassionate collaboration amongst African artists and creatives. I’m truly honoured to be included in this seminal gathering of contemporary African makers.’
– ZIZIPHO POSWA
Christie’s and the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) in Nigeria are collaborating to raise funds for MOWAA and its initiatives to create a cultural ecosystem in Benin City, based on the art of the past, present and future. A number of artists have generously agreed to donate original works of art to the auction, including Yinka Shonibare, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Lakwena Maciver and Victor Ehikhamenor. Proceeds from the sale of the works will go towards MOWAA initiatives including the presentation of the Nigeria Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, 2024—commissioned by the Governor of Edo State and also curated by Aindrea Emelife—and the 20-acre Creative Campus, including the Rainforest Gallery. Designed by the Dakar-based architecture firm Worofila, the Rainforest Gallery will be dedicated to showcasing Modern and Contemporary art, as well as historic exhibitions.
Working with clay and ceramics for the last two decades, Cape Town-based artist Zizipho Poswa is known for her large-scale, anthropomorphic sculptures. Beginning her artistic career in textiles, learning hand-painting and pattern design, Poswa’s sculptures display a lively and distinctive treatment of surface. Hand-pinching and hand-coiling works that can tower up to three metres tall, Poswa’s handling of her medium is physical, engaged, and often demanding. Believing in the power of clay to tell stories, her abstracted vessels pay tribute her Xhosa cultural heritage, its rituals and practices. A series of totemic works recall traditions of head-carrying—umthwalo—with balancing clay forms resembling water buckets and pails. In a later body of work, Poswa celebrated African hairstyling with tightly coiled embellishments that evoked braids, Bantu knots, and hair combs. Titled after the names of African women—a neighbour from her village, a local farmer, family member, or close friend—Poswa’s works form portraits of her community and celebrate rich histories of female labour and strength in the Eastern Cape province. Born in Mthatha, South Africa in 1979, Poswa studied Surface Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Her first solo show iLobola was presented at Southern Guild in Cape Town (2021), and the artist debuted in the US with her solo exhibition iiNtsika zeSizwe at Galerie 56, New York earlier this year. She has recently completed a residency at the Centre for Contemporary Ceramics at California State University, and her work will be included in the forthcoming 60th Venice Biennale. Her sculptures are held in prestigious institutional collections such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Philadelphia Museum of Art.
– ZIZIPHO POSWA
Christie’s and the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) in Nigeria are collaborating to raise funds for MOWAA and its initiatives to create a cultural ecosystem in Benin City, based on the art of the past, present and future. A number of artists have generously agreed to donate original works of art to the auction, including Yinka Shonibare, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Lakwena Maciver and Victor Ehikhamenor. Proceeds from the sale of the works will go towards MOWAA initiatives including the presentation of the Nigeria Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, 2024—commissioned by the Governor of Edo State and also curated by Aindrea Emelife—and the 20-acre Creative Campus, including the Rainforest Gallery. Designed by the Dakar-based architecture firm Worofila, the Rainforest Gallery will be dedicated to showcasing Modern and Contemporary art, as well as historic exhibitions.
Working with clay and ceramics for the last two decades, Cape Town-based artist Zizipho Poswa is known for her large-scale, anthropomorphic sculptures. Beginning her artistic career in textiles, learning hand-painting and pattern design, Poswa’s sculptures display a lively and distinctive treatment of surface. Hand-pinching and hand-coiling works that can tower up to three metres tall, Poswa’s handling of her medium is physical, engaged, and often demanding. Believing in the power of clay to tell stories, her abstracted vessels pay tribute her Xhosa cultural heritage, its rituals and practices. A series of totemic works recall traditions of head-carrying—umthwalo—with balancing clay forms resembling water buckets and pails. In a later body of work, Poswa celebrated African hairstyling with tightly coiled embellishments that evoked braids, Bantu knots, and hair combs. Titled after the names of African women—a neighbour from her village, a local farmer, family member, or close friend—Poswa’s works form portraits of her community and celebrate rich histories of female labour and strength in the Eastern Cape province. Born in Mthatha, South Africa in 1979, Poswa studied Surface Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Her first solo show iLobola was presented at Southern Guild in Cape Town (2021), and the artist debuted in the US with her solo exhibition iiNtsika zeSizwe at Galerie 56, New York earlier this year. She has recently completed a residency at the Centre for Contemporary Ceramics at California State University, and her work will be included in the forthcoming 60th Venice Biennale. Her sculptures are held in prestigious institutional collections such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Philadelphia Museum of Art.