Join Xanthe Somers at Southern Guild Cape Town gallery for a dialogue with this Zimbabwean ceramic sculptor on Thursday, 16 May, 5:30 PM.
Xanthe Somers
Currently working on a new large-scale series of intricately formed ceramic vessels at the GUILD Residency, Somers will lead a conversation detailing her interest in the traditions of ‘women’s work’, contemporary craft and how this relates to labour practices in the Global South.
Xanthe Somers’ ceramic artworks evoke a sense of play, combining political commentary and hyper-ornamentation to draw attention to overconsumption, cheap labour and the impact of environmental-racist practices on the Global South.
Born in 1992 in Harare, Zimbabwe, Somers studied Fine Art (Hons) at the University of Cape Town and received her MA in Postcolonial Culture and Global Policy from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2020.
The bodies of Somers’ intricate pieces are hand-coiled in the traditional way and then disrupted – their surfaces punctured, woven or adorned with meticulously shaped and painted details.
Somers has held four solo exhibitions: Rancid at Galerie Revel in Bordeaux, France (2022); A Vocabulary for Ghosts at First Floor Gallery Harare, Zimbabwe (2021); Hole Not Whole at Fusion Art Gallery, Turin, Italy (2016); and The Intimacy of Objects at The Corridor, Harare (2016). Most recently, Southern Guild presented her work at Untitled Art fair in Miami in 2022 and 2023. She has also shown at AKAA Paris, Collectable Art Fair in Brussels and Collect Art Fair in London, where she is now based. Somers’ work was recently acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum.
WHAT: Xanthe Somers – Artist Talk
WHERE: Southern Guild, Silo 5, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town 8001
WHEN: Thursday, 16 May, 5:30 PM
RSVP: E rsvp.ct@southernguild.com
INFO: T +27 21 461 2856 | E southernguild@theguildgroup.co.za | VISIT Â
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