Exhibition Details

Southern Guild is pleased to present 'Six Prayers' by Franco-Beninois artist King Houndekpinkou, a series of six large-scale ceramic sculptures, from June 6, 2024 until August 22, 2024.
Produced over eight weeks while participating in the GUILD Residency in Cape Town, 'Six Prayers' fuses a variety of traditions with future possibilities to offer new myths to new gods, complete with their own ritualistic objects. Houndekpinkou offers these six vessels as super realities in the same multiverse. 
Houndekpinkou’s guiding philosophy, the interdependence and divine nature inherent in all aspects of life, is evidenced in his approach to this body of work. Through alchemical processes of clay-making and new forms of magic, sacred geometries meet fractals from the future. He juxtaposes smooth against rough, matt against gloss, rounded shapes against angular forms, spikes that repel next to tentacles that reach out and attract. That draw in as they rebuff.
Houndekpinkou’s work reflects a creolisation of multiple knowledge systems and influences known as syncretism – the fusion of different traditions, beliefs or practices into a new, cohesive whole. It often occurs when diverse cultural or religious systems come into contact and interact, leading to the integration of elements from each tradition.
Having learned the meditative art of wheel-thrown ceramics under master potter Toshiaki Shibuta in Bizen – one of the six ancient kilns of Japan known as the Roku Koyo – he infuses a deep spiritual intent into his process, creating vessel forms that he then stacks and clusters into sculptural totems in which function dissolves into dysfunction.