Southern Guild and Blanc Gallery, in collaboration with Norman Teague Design Studio and Michael Graham/Balloon, present “South x South” featuring ceramic artist Andile Dyalvane on Saturday, 15 April. The event at Blanc Gallery on Chicago’s South Side takes place during Expo Chicago, where Southern Guild is exhibiting for the first time. One of Africa’s foremost ceramic artists, Dyalvane will be in conversation with independent curator and cultural strategist Ashara Ekundayo, highlighting the connections between Black artists from South Africa and Chicago’s South Side. This event was also made possible by the support of the Rebuild Foundation.

The discussion will focus on Dyalvane’s extended body of work, iThongo (Ancestral Dreamscape), which focuses on a gathering of dreams, seated in the soul, held by the spirit of our ancestors. For Dyalvane, the language of dreams is symbolic and realised as “uyalezo”, messages from our ancestral spirits. iThongo debuted in the artist’s rural village, Ngobozana, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, before being exhibited at Southern Guild’s Cape Town gallery in 2021. The journey was also documented in a short film which will be screened at the event.

Ekundayo is a queer, Black feminist interdisciplinary independent curator, visual maker, cultural theologian and arts organiser whose creative practice is rooted in joy-informed pedagogies and the study and creation of Black archives, site-responsive ceremony and artist-based strategies that illuminate the specific expertise of Black womxn of the African Diaspora. She is the owner at AECreative Consulting Partners, LLC and the founder/director of Artist As First Responder, which serves as a platform to reify and support creatives whose work heals communities and saves lives.