Exhibition Details

Southern Guild, Cape Town is proud to present 'Madoda: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men', a solo exhibition by Cape Town-based ceramicist Madoda Fani from June 6, 2024 until August 22, 2024.
Inheriting its title from the artist’s given name (meaning ‘men’) and the acclaimed work of non-fiction by writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans, this exhibition is a mapping of urban Black masculinities that challenges hetero-normative narratives of the township Black man in South Africa. Re-imagining and re-imaging ubiquitous domestic objects in clay, this body of work deconstructs reductive and harmful cliches of Black masculinities, re-fashioning them with masterful skill and attention to craft.
Challenging this fixity, 'Madoda: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men' is a gesture of gratitude for and recognition of the Black men who shaped Fani. Using the township space as a topographical map of defiant tenderness, he eulogises the men he came from: his grandfather, a butcher, who sold sheep heads roasted over open fire; his father, a full-time steelworker and part-time artist, fashioning sculptures in the backyard of his home; ceramicist elders like Simon Masilo, the Nala family and Nic Sithole; his uncle, cousins and brothers, who through acts of softness and care created versions of masculinity informed by their environment and in spite of it. Fani puts this care into his painstakingly and delicately detailed work. Each carved line and indentation, an imprint of love. Hand-coiled, smoke-fired, meditative and rhythmic; the tenderness encased in a defensive and resilient exoskeleton.