Born in Port Elizabeth now Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa in 1976, Chuma Maweni makes meticulously crafted ceramic furniture and vessels. He first drew local attention for his series of teardrop-shaped conical pots, smoke-fired and burnished using traditional Nguni techniques. Their dark, porous surfaces, striking silhouettes and smoky scent established him as a distinctly contemporary ceramicist inspired by the utilitarian forms and techniques of Zulu and Xhosa ceramics. Maweni traces his craft to his earliest memories making clay figures of bulls and cows on the muddy riverbanks of the Eastern Cape. Growing up amidst the social upheaval of anti-Apartheid riots in the 1980s, Maweni had to move from Port Elizabeth to KwaPayne village, just outside Mthatha also in the Eastern Cape so he could focus on his schooling. Maweni graduated with a Bachelor of Technology in ceramic design from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in 2002 and spent a few years teaching ceramics to rural women in a poverty alleviation programme run by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.
Maweni moved to Cape Town in 2006 to work for the Light From Africa Foundation, which ran the Art in the Forest ceramics studio, gallery and outreach centre. There he mentored and taught other ceramicists while honing his style, which led to him opening his own studio in 2016. Maweni’s ‘Imbizo’ table and stool set – the word means “gathering” in isiXhosa – set in motion a more monumental direction and saw him apply his intricate carving skills into wood for the first time. The installation has since developed into an extensive range of stools, which earned him a Design Foundation Award in 2018. Plinths, side-tables and large dining tables came later; each piece with its own combination of shapes, precise incisions and textured patterns.
Image courtesy of Artsy.
Maweni has exhibited widely with Southern Guild and has work in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it forms part of ‘Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room’ (November 2021). The gallery has presented his work internationally at Expo Chicago, Design Miami, The Salon Art + Design in New York, PAD London and the Christie’s Design Auction. He was an artist in residence at the Academy of Ceramics Gmunden (AoCG) in Gmunden, Austria in Summer 2023 and his work is included in ‘Clay Formes’ edited by Olivia Barrell. Maweni created the largest collection of his work to date for Xigera Safari Lodge in Botswana in 2021. Comprising more than 70 unique pieces in black clay, the selection includes stools, pedestals, tables, lamps and coffee sets that are found throughout the lodge, each one unique in shape, colour and patterning. Maweni’s first solo exhibition titled ‘Imvelaphi’ opens on the 14th of November 2024 and will run until the 28th of February 2025. This exhibition will show his largest collection of handcrafted furniture, lighting and vessels to date. This body of work is a meditation on Maweni’s familial and cultural origins, drawing links between the cyclical expansion of life and the spiritual symbology at the heart of his own studio practice. ‘Imvelaphi’ will run concurrently with Ayotunde Ojo‘s solo exhibition ‘These Four Walls.’
