Exhibition Details

Southern Guild Cape Town is pleased to present Invisible Hand, a solo exhibition of large-scale ceramic sculptures by Xanthe Somers, opening on August 29 and running until October 31, 2024. Currently based in London, Somers is a Zimbabwean ceramicist whose work is a critical reading of extraction economies and notions of domesticity within post-colonial contexts, with a particular lens focused on the country of her birth. Comprising three oversized vessels made during her stay at the GUILD Residency earlier this year, her new series is a compelling exploration of history, craft, and identity.
Somers asks us to question the ways in which the post-colony co-opts us into its campaigns of violence against marginalised peoples. She impels us to consider how ordinary cruelty can become. In a poem written by Somers to accompany the exhibition, the artist asks: “What tapestry are we creating and what does the story say? What exists at the ends and what happens in the fray? Which thread is pulled and not replaced? Who mends the holes when they tear away? Who wipes their dust from this trodden carpet? Who cleans the sheets on which we lay? Whose tangled dreams get linked like lace, whilst others unwind and fall away?”