Born in Port Elizabeth 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. Amidst the social upheaval of anti-Apartheid riots in the 1980s, he moved to KwaPayne village, just outside Mthatha in the rural Transkei, 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. He 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, opening his own studio in 2016.

SELECT GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2023 On Lines and Lineage , Cavalli Gallery, Somerset West, South Africa
2022 Spring Awakening , Southern Guild, Cape Town, South Africa
2020 Solace , Southern Guild, Cape Town, South Africa
Closer, Still , Southern Guild, Cape Town, South Africa
2018 SGX , Southern Guild, Cape Town, South Africa
Extra Ordinary, Southern Guild, Cape Town, South Africa
2017 Stellar , Southern Guild, Cape Town, South Africa
Idangatye, Southern Guild, Cape Town, South Africa
2016 Transformation , Southern Guild, Cape Town, South Africa
Natural Selection, Southern Guild, Johannesburg, South Africa
A New Wave, Southern Guild, Cape Town, South Africa

FAIRS

2023 EXPO Chicago
Investec Cape Town Art Fair
2022 Design Miami
SculptX, Johannesburg
2021 Design Miami
2020 Intersect Aspen
Intersect Chicago
2019 PAD London
2018 Design Miami
The Salon Art + Design, New York
2017 Christie’s Design Auction, London

RESIDENCIES
2023 Academy of Ceramics Gmunden /Gmundner Keramik, Austria

COLLECTIONS
The Metropolitan Museum, New York, USA
Collection of HRH Franz, Duke of Bavaria