Andile Dyalvane
Designer
Andile Dyalvane is one of South Africa’s foremost ceramic artists. Guided by a deep spiritual connection to his Xhosa ancestors, Dyalvane’s complex, large-scale ceramic artworks are a metaphorical vessel through which he seeks to honour his cultural traditions and share his journey of healing. Born in 1978 in the small village of Ngobozana in the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa, Dyalvane grew up farming and looking after his father’s cattle herd – sewing a deep connection to the land that resonates powerfully through his work today. A member of the International Academy of Ceramics, he completed a National Diploma in Ceramic Design at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in 2003 and co-founded Imiso Ceramics with Zizipho Poswa in 2005. Dyalvane has held solo exhibitions at Southern Guild in Cape Town and Friedman Benda in New York – the most recent of which was the critically acclaimed iThongo (Ancestral Dreamscape) in 2020 and 2021 – and has exhibited widely, lectured, and held artist residencies all over the world. His work is in the collections of museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vitra Design Museum, New Taipei City Yingge Ceramic Museum, Iziko South African National Gallery and Pérez Museum in Miami.
Exhibited at DESIGN MIAMI. 2023 Andile Dyalvane’s large-scale ceramic work, ‘Ngobozana’ forms part of the collection of sculptural seats that debuted in his ground-breaking 2020 solo exhibition, ‘iThongo’ (Ancestral Dreamscape). The title of this body of work refers to the medium through which messages are transmitted from the ancestors, a vital current of energy that runs throughout Dyalvane’s artistic practice. Hand-coiled in terracotta clay, the intricate form of each chair is based on a single pictogram or glyph from a series of close to 200 symbols that Dyalvane designed to symbolize important concepts in Xhosa culture. This symbolic lexicon has been an ongoing project for the artist, born of his interest in preserving traditional Xhosa knowledge, cultural practices and language. Ngobozana is the name of Dyalvane’s rural village, whose name means “little basket” (because the cluster of structures hugging the hillside resembled an upside-down basket shape). Taking its inspiration from both Dyalvane’s personal memories and various African artefacts, ‘Ngobozana’ sits close to the earth – the ground revered as an ancient portal for ancestral communion. Materials: glazed earthenware.
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