Zizipho Poswa is a Cape Town-based artist whose large-scale ceramic and bronze sculptures are bold declarations of African womanhood. Born in 1979 in the town of Mthatha in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, Poswa studied surface design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Straddling figuration and abstraction, her anthropomorphic totems are characterised by an elliptical approach to form and bold colour choice. Her work is a deep invocation of her personal journey and an homage to the spiritual traditions and matriarchal stewardship of her Xhosa culture.

The artist’s first solo exhibition, ‘iLobola’ (2021), paid homage to the spiritual offering underpinning the custom of ‘lobola’, or bride-wealth – the cow – with each of the sculptures alluding to a specific stage or role player in the negotiation process preceding a traditional Xhosa marriage. Poswa’s second solo exhibition, ‘uBuhle boKhokho’ (Beauty of Our Ancestors), reinterpreted historic and contemporary African hairstyles from across the continent.
Poswa’s debut solo in the United States, ‘iiNtsika zeSizwe’ (Pillars of the Nation), was her first sculpture series made entirely in bronze. Held at Galerie56 in New York, the exhibition was inspired by the practice of ‘umthwalo’ whereby rural women carry heavy loads on their heads, often walking long distances on foot. The artist’s most recent solo exhibition – ‘Indyebo yakwaNtu’ (Black Bounty) – explored African cultures of bodily adornment through the depiction of symbolic amulets as bronze-cast elements atop vast ceramic silos.

Poswa’s work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Princeton University Art Museum, LOEWE Foundation, Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Schulting Art Collection and the collection of HRH Franz, Duke of Bavaria.