uBuhle boKhokho

Southern Guild presents uBuhle boKhokho (Beauty of Our Ancestors), a solo exhibition of ceramic and bronze sculptures by Zizipho Poswa. Almost a year in the making, uBuhle boKhokho continues the artist’s exploration of her own cultural heritage as a Xhosa woman through the making of her sculptural works.

Hair, with its profound symbolic relationship to Blackness, remains a relevant source of inspiration and dialogue within contemporary cultural discourse. Poswa created and wore 12 hairstyles over a period of five months, documenting each embodiment photographically as part of her process. Through this charged metaphoric lens, hair becomes a personal script for language, for the carrying of meaning and the celebration of self as an act of defiance.

Measuring up to two metres high, the sculptures are confrontational in their monumentality while retaining an imposing sensuality. Their hand-coiled ceramic bases reflect Poswa’s shift in focus from pattern and colour to shape and texture, culminating in elaborate adornments made from either bronze or clay. The series of 20 sculptures employs a visual vocabulary that straddles figuration and abstraction, reflecting the three-dimensionality of woven, braided and threaded hair. Many of the historic and contemporary hairstyles that Poswa references include architectural constructions where the hair (both natural and artificial) is wrapped over armatures. These include the complex crested arrangement worn by Fulani women from West Africa and the fan-shaped headpiece of the Zande from Congo.

Having specialised in textile design at university, Poswa is drawn to the process of constructing each hairstyle and the meditative aspect of crafting their patterns. The manipulation of Black hair is a long-recognised traditional art form that has only recently entered the mainstream lexicon of cultural iconography. The works in uBuhle boKhokho are palimpsestic in their visual power, echoing a lineage of artistry that includes traditional hairstyles documented in archival materials, the iconic images of Nigerian photographer J.D. ’Okhai Ojeikere and the contemporary creations of Chicago-based artist Shani Crowe. As in the work of Ojeikere and Crowe, the ephemerality of these cultural symbols finds a new transcendental sense of permanence in Poswa’s ceramics.

uBuhle boKhokho expands on the artist’s earlier series, Magodi – titled after the Shona word for traditional African hairstyles – offering a sustained and considerably more in-depth body of work. Curated throughout the entire gallery space, the exhibition invites the viewer to walk through an assembly of selves, each work reflecting a different hairstyle worn during the project’s embodied research.

Some works have been titled after specific women who have played a prominent role in Poswa’s life, as well as their country of origin. In so doing, she interweaves the personal and historic; situating herself in a vast and ever-expanding network of Black women who continue to self-define and affirm their own standards of beauty.

The 12 iconic hairstyles have since been made into twelve 42 x 57 cm prints, available to purchase as a limited-edition box set, personally signed by the artist. A special insert showcasing all 24 sculptures in the series, as well as the styles to which they relate and their associated descriptions, completes the set. The box set was launched by Southern Guild at Expo Chicago in 2023.