Andile Dyalvane South Africa, b. 1978

Andile Dyalvane is one of Africa’s foremost ceramic artists. Guided by a deep spiritual connection to his Xhosa ancestors, his 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, near Qobo-Qobo in the rural Eastern Cape province of South Africa, Dyalvane grew up farming and looking after his father’s cattle herd – sewing a deep connection to the land and his Xhosa culture that resonates powerfully through his work today. His medium of clay or “umhlaba” (mother earth) is, at its most fundamental, a life-affirming connection to the soil. But by providing a medium for storytelling, it is also an essential energetic link to his past, present and future. 

Dyalvane completed a National Diploma in Art and Design at Sivuyile Technical College in Gugulethu, Cape Town, followed by a National Diploma in Ceramic Design from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in 2003. In 2005, he and Zizipho Poswa co-founded Imiso Ceramics, whose handmade tableware and vessels have earned the studio an international following. Through his functional designs for Imiso, he developed a language of incision marks inspired by the African tradition of body scarification that continues to inform his work today.

iNgqweji (Bird’s Nest), Dyalvane’s most recent and fully-realised body of work, expands his practice into sculptural installation, drawing on his interest in creating communal spaces charged with spiritual intent – to reawaken the senses, reclaim indigenous knowledge and restore the symbiotic connection between human beings and the natural world. Conceived as a series of immersive environments inspired by the desert, forests and caves, iNgqweji teems with biomorphic forms, vivid colour and tactile materials such as free-blown glass and hand-forged copper. Many of the works also incorporate light and sound elements.

Dyalvane’s work is in the collections of the Lose Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Design Museum Gent, Vitra Design Museum, New Taipei City Yingge Ceramic Museum, Iziko South African National Gallery and NMMU Art Museum in Port Elizabeth. The artist has exhibited at museums all over the world, including the National Art Museum of China, Seoul Museum of Craft Art, Vitra Design Museum and Iziko South African National Gallery. He has taken part in a number of biennales including the inaugural Indian Ocean Triennial in Perth, New Taipei City Yingge Ceramic Museum Biennale, Tel Aviv Biennale of Crafts and Design, and Jinju Traditional Crafts Biennale. 

Book publications include Clay Formes edited by Olivia Barrell (Art Formes, 2023), Africanfuturism: African Imaginings of other Times, Spaces, and Worlds by Kimberly Cleveland (Ohio University Press, 2024) and Ubunzululwazi Lwabaphantsi (Ancestral Wisdom) (Almas Art Foundation, 2024).

A member of the International Academy of Ceramics, he is frequently invited to share his knowledge through master classes and workshops around the world and has earned residencies at prestigious institutions, including Leach Pottery in the UK and the Academy of Ceramics Gmunden in Austria. He is the recipient of multiple honours, including the 2015 Design Foundation Icon Award and a Special Mention as a finalist in the 2022 LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize.