The Totemic Field Brings Collective Design to Life

The Totemic Field, a collaborative exhibition held at Sisonke Gallery during this year’s Cape Town Furniture Week, presented shape-shifting forms that resisted the idea of the singular design hero, foregrounding making as a shared, evolving practice.

WORDS Gina Dionisio PHOTOS Gina Dionisio; Cape Town Furniture Week / Hannah St Clair 

A totemic field is not merely a collection of objects but a charged system organised around symbols that carry presence and gravity. Meaning emerges through proximity, repetition, and exchange. In The Totemic Field – a collaborative exhibition by Joburg-based furniture designers Mash.T Design Studio, TheUrbanative, and multidisciplinary design studio Hoven – these ideas found compelling material expression.

Curated by Nisha van Hoven, the showcase was an artful exploration of the contemporary totemic – where waste, error, and experimentation are not by-products of design but generative forces, producing functional forms that quietly hold collective meaning. “They are definitely not static objects, they are very much adaptive systems. So you will see part lamp, part structure, part object. They refuse fixed identities,” says Nisha.

Featuring new pieces and prototypes, the exhibition positioned modularity not only as a functional strategy but also as a philosophy grounded in circularity, collaboration, and expressive African design. Each piece became a vessel of memory and intention, shaped by material, labour, and the many hands involved in its making.

For Thabisa Mjo of Mash.T Design Studio, the showcase highlighted the brand’s continued journey of generational artisanship, collaboration, and learning. “This story revolves around our metal spinner, Grandpa Jackson. We asked him to teach one of our young artists how to spin. And so this is the result of a year-long apprenticeship,” she says, pointing to the prototypes.

As the apprentice worked towards mastering the spinning process – a technique that resulted in the new Axis Collection – many components naturally didn’t make the cut. These were assembled into imperfect prototypes, such as the Mad Hatter, a standing lamp that embraces the imperfections of its materials, revealing a new aesthetic in which waste tells a story.

Mpho Vackier, founder and designer of TheUrbanative, presented new and reimagined pieces from the African Crowns, Homecoming, and Ndebele collections. “We wanted to push the materials and push ourselves,” she says. Among the pieces on display was the Fula Chair, upholstered in Mungo double-cloth fabric with a blue-stained natural ash seat – a progression from the Fulani Chair. “This chair has lived many, many lives. I think there are five versions. It was first made in steel, then charred red oak, and now we’ve revisited it in colour,” explains Mpho.

Crafted from solid kiaat and stained a deep rosewood, the Phondo Mirror is another addition to the 2018 African Crowns Collection. “This piece is exciting for us because we are known for working in steel, not timber,” says Mpho. “As novices in timber work, we wanted to push ourselves to see if we could integrate the things that we’ve learned from metalworking into working in timber.”

Each piece on display in The Totemic Field reflected the fluid and negotiated nature of contemporary making and collective life. Through time, labour, and exchange, the exhibition revealed the totemic field not as a fixed object to be observed, but as a living practice shaped collectively. mashtdesignstudio.com | theurbanative.com | hoven.co.za

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