Clay Has Memory: Creative Lineages from Africa
Zizipho Poswa (born 1979, Mthatha, South Africa; active Cape Town, South Africa), uNa’kaMzingisi (Mzingisi’s Mother), 2024. Glazed earthenware, 134.6 × 50.8 × 58.4 cm. Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Carl Otto von Kienbusch Jr. Memorial Collection Fund. © Zizipho Poswa. Image courtesy of Southern Guild
Princeton University Art Museum
Princeton, NJ 08544
USA
Clay Has Memory examines the ways in which African and African Diasporic artists use clay to sustain creative legacies from Africa.
The exhibition brings together works by historical, modern, and contemporary artists who draw on and preserve intergenerational knowledge through their practices. Referencing the long history of ceramics in Africa, these artists harness the potential of craft traditions and the vitality of clay to establish new relationships to place and shared histories. Vanessa Agard-Jones, a scholar whose words have impacted many of the artists in the exhibition, writes, “Clay remembers from whence it came.” As the first exhibition to focus on African Diasporic artistic practices organized by the Princeton University Art Museum, Clay Has Memory foregrounds the techniques, memories, and innovations contained within ceramic vessels and sculpture and centers the contributions of ceramic artists—in particular the impact of women—in fostering connections across geographies and generations.
