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Works by Fani and Poswa in group exhibition 'Clay Has Memory: Creative Lineages from Africa' at Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey
20 Jul 2026 (3 min) read
A new exhibition bringing together artists across generations to explore clay as a medium of memory and knowledge transmission.
Ceramic artists Madoda Fani and Zizipho Poswa each have work featured in the group exhibition, Clay Has Memory: Creative Lineages from Africa, currently on view in the David Nasher Haemisegger Gallery at Princeton University Art Museum (running through July 3, 2027). The show, curated by Perrin Lathrop (https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/about/staff-directory/perrin-lathrop), curator of African art, examines the ways in which artists from Africa and its diasporas use clay to sustain the legacies of their creative predecessors.
Bringing together works by 35 artists working across historical, modern, and contemporary contexts, Clay has Memory features 45 vessels and sculptures, highlighting how these forms transmit memory and meaning from one generation to the next, through the techniques and processes used to create them as well as through the clay itself. In particular, the presentation centers the contributions of women across geographies and generations, including artists whose work has historically received limited visibility in museum contexts.
“This exhibition continues our ongoing interrogation of ceramics as an art form that has for too long been marginalised, not least because of its frequent association with women makers. Together these spectacular objects offer a fascinating examination of the medium and bring a compelling focus to makers from Africa and its diasporas,” said James Steward (https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/about/staff-directory/james-steward), the Nancy A. Nasher–David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director of the Princeton University Art Museum. “It’s an area in which we’ve made a deep investment in building our collections, without which this exhibition would not have been possible.”
"It is important for teaching museums such as ours to present exhibitions of this kind,” said Perrin Lathrop, exhibition curator and the Museum’s curator of African art. “Clay Has Memory will trouble the boundaries between art and craft and invite inquiry into the hierarchies that have historically relegated the creative labour of ceramic artists, especially women, to the realm of the anonymous and the undervalued. This will be an opportunity for visitors and scholars alike to understand the manipulation of clay as a repository and metaphor for generational knowledge.”
The exhibition considers how artists sustain inherited knowledge from Africa through their commitment to clay as a medium and is organized around four themes: ‘Raw Material’ - demonstrates how clay can carry histories of place and identity; ‘Genealogies of Labor’ - making becomes a site of knowledge transmission, as techniques move between teachers, students, families, and communities, historically through matrilineal lines (Madoda’s Ukhamba Beer Pot (2024) is included here); ‘Memorial’ - brings together works from across centuries that commemorate individuals with clay; ‘Monument’ - large-scale clay sculptures that address histories marked by the legacies of colonialism (Poswa’s work uNa’kaMzingisi (Mzingisi’s Mother) (2024) is included here).
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication featuring new research by Lathrop, along with essays by the art historians Elizabeth Perrill, PhD, and Jareh Das, PhD, that elaborate on the artistic lineages presented in the exhibition. Public programmes will engage audiences with the exhibition’s themes and include scholarly lectures, family artmaking opportunities, and hands-on workshops with some of the exhibiting artists.