
Nandipha Mntambo’s Furniture Blurs Human and Animal Forms in a New Show at Capetown’s Southern Guild
Until recently, the Eswatini-born and Johannesburg-based artist Nandipha Mntambo was best known for her uncanny cowhide-resin sculptures that explored, and exploded, the boundaries between animal skin and human figuration. “Transcending Instinct,” her first solo show for Cape Town’s Southern Guild gallery, on view through April 8, stretches her expertise into the realm of functional sculpture.
The result is a quartet of haunting seating. The Hypnotic stool reimagines her 2009 sculpture uMcedoas a hump concealed by tassels that pays tribute to the voodoo spirit Zangbeto. A coat she fashioned that same year, adorned with cow ears, inspired the unsettling cocoon chair Love Quest. A chaise, Serenity,invokes black holes and tentacles yet offers a cozy sheepskin seat in which to snuggle. The Pinnacle chair upends expectations entirely, conscripting an overturned Zebra to serve as a strange seat. “I’m using my current practice as a lens to look back,” Mntambo said in a statement. And she’s finding a range of deeply-bodied, provocative meditations on form—that of human beings, of animals, and what lies in-between.








read more
DesignWire
Yinka Ilori Enlivens a Café at Superblue in Miami With Wallcoverings Informed by Nigerian Parables
Yinka Ilori splashed onto the design scene about a decade ago with found chairs he transformed into vivid objects that fused his Nigerian roots and London upbringing. His permanent installation at Blue Rider, the café a…
DesignWire
Aaron Poritz’s Solo Show ‘Big Woods’ Pushes Wood Furniture into the Future
Brooklyn-based ceramicist and furniture designer Aaron Poritz of Poritz & Studio opens a solo show of sculptural works on January 27. The evocative forms will be on view weekdays through May at New York’s Cristina Graj…
DesignWire
BoND Designs Company Gallery’s New Lower East Side Location
Founders and partners in life, Daniel Rauchwerger and Noam Dvir launched their design firm BoND, or Bureau of Noam & Daniel, with queer spaces in mind.
recent stories
DesignWire
5 Design Luminaries Share Their Top-of-Mind Destinations
Principals of ODA Architecture, AB+AC Architects, Roar, MAWD, and CID Design Group share the cities on their design radars and why they stand out.
DesignWire
Highlights from ‘Threadwork: Women Redefining Fabric Art’
A group of 17 fiber artists explore concepts of female-identifying means of self-expression in “Threadwork: Women Redefining Fabric Art,” an online exhibit.
DesignWire
Design Ideas Abound at INTERIOR DESIGN’s Latest re:Source Event
INTERIOR DESIGN recently hosted its latest re:Source event in picturesque Stowe, Vermont following a successful edition in Arizona last April.