Madoda Fani

Madoda Fani makes hand-coiled, burnished and smoke-fired pieces that are a contemporary evolution of traditional Nguni ceramics. Born in 1975, he grew up in Gugulethu township, Cape Town and studied graphic design at Sivuyile College.

Fani credits South Africa’s lineage of traditional clay masters as seminal influences. He was schooled in smoke-firing techniques by Molelekoa Simon Masilo and Nic Sithole, while Jabu Nala – a member of the renowned Nala family of Zulu beer-pot makers – taught him to burnish clay with a stone.

Although he uses traditional techniques, Fani's curvaceous, coiled sculptures and hand-carved embellishments are entirely distinct. He works on a large scale, building organic-shaped forms whose smooth surfaces are punctuated by intricate, repetitive patterns lending them a scaled appearance. He has exhibited widely with Southern Guild, including a collaborative exhibition with Chuma Maweni, Idangatye, in 2017, and a solo presentation in 2021, iQweqwe (meaning “crust”), which saw his patterned incisions become an all-encompassing ‘skin’ inspired by insect exoskeletons.

Fani’s 2024 solo exhibition, Madoda: Let Us Know Praise Famous Men, marks a formal and conceptual turning point for the artist. Reimagining ubiquitous domestic objects in clay, this body of work deconstructs reductive cliches of Black masculinities, re-fashioning them with masterful skill and attention to craft in ambitious, sculptural shapes. Fani was a featured artist at the 2024 Indian Ocean Craft Triennial, with a solo exhibition at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery in Western Australia. Titled Imbokodo, this body of work draws its inspiration from the Nguni word meaning “rock” or “stone”, commonly used metaphorically to depict resilient women. Through his artistic expression, Fani celebrates the multifaceted essence of womanhood, as evidenced by five smoke-fired vessels bearing the names of five women.

Over the course of his career, Fani has branched out into clay seating, timber furniture and bronze sculpture. He has participated in residency programmes in Argentina (2009), France (2013), Austria (2023) and Mexico (2023), and taught a summer workshop at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, US (2023). His work has been featured in Clay Formes, edited by Olivia Barrell (Art Formes, 2023) and Handbuilt Ceramics by Jo Taylor (The Crowood Press, 2021).

Fani was a finalist for the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize in 2022 and received first prize at the 2016 Ceramics Southern Africa Exhibition, among others. He has work in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, and in the collections of the LOEWE Foundation and HRH Franz, Duke of Bavaria.