Some traditions are of such a heft that they are born of many mothers. And in the case of the Zulu ceramic tradition, the mother is often literal. Mothers, and the mothers of mothers, down a great ancestral chain have left their hands in the clay. Distinct from the individualistic, Western paradigm of “The Great Artist” is a subtler tradition: a making along the ancestral line, a making with many hands and many voices. In South Africa, many artists are inheritors of both of these traditions. When calling to Jabulile Nala, it is perhaps impossible to not call to the great human line from which she is drawn. The artist comes from a strong matriarchal lineage: her mother was “the most famous named Zulu potter of the twentieth century,” Nesta Nala (1940–2005) who began making vessels in clay at the age of twelve, learning the tradition from her mother, Siphiwe Nala (1914–2003), who had in turn been taught by Nesta’s paternal grandmother.

Ukhamba is the term for blackened vessels that are used during rituals within Zulu culture for serving and drinking beer; pots used for communing with the ancestors. The works of Nesta Nala were the first Zulu pots to enter into the fine art realm and to be placed inside the art gallery. “When purchased, these pots came to sit on coffee tables or in museum cases. They never held beer – their owners never intended them to – and potters knew this,” writes author Elizabeth Perrill. Jabulile Nala has been hand-coiling forms, notably the familial ukhamba and uphiso, since 1980. Her work often pays tribute to the characteristically dainty bases of her mother’s pots and the richness of their motifs: the power and symbolism of the triangular form, especially in juxtaposition with the vessel’s curved outline. Jabulile Nala has innovated even further: compressing the round belly of the ukhamba, flanking its sides with handles more commonly found on traditional meat dishes, and providing a larger surface on which to incise and sculpt a myriad of minute geometric structures.