Ifa is an isiZulu word for inheritance. In isiZulu, indlalifa is the one entrusted with the family legacy.

Indlalifa, taken in conjunction with ‘nefa’, allows us to understand this project as one concerned with heritage (ifa) and the protagonists (indlalifa) who hold custodianship over age-old methods of handiwork, yet have innovated upon the legacy entrusted to them. This is a revisitation of craft work in South Africa, and more specifically, in KwaZulu-Natal.

KwaZulu has a long history of what is colloquially called umsebenzi wezandla (approximately translated as skilled handiwork). We have extended this notion to interpret it as ’thinking with one’s hands’ or ‘speaking with one’s hands’ (ukukhuluma noma ukuloba ngezandla).

Similarly, the KZNSA Gallery has a long-standing relationship with a wide category of crafters from across the province, serving as a critical dual outlet: both as a revenue stream and an exhibition platform. Lifting from this mandate, the KZNSA Gallery, with the support of the First Rand Foundation, has commissioned a community of practitioners to produce a multi-modal body of work extending from products to a concerted documentation effort comprising a two-part short documentary, photographic essay and a critical essay reflecting on the heritage research component of this work.

This project deliberately breaks the binary mould of ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary’, it refuses the reductive simplification of heritage as something that sits in the shadow of the modern. Rather, these works operate liberally across the categories of art, craft and product design, dissolving the superficial margins of past-present, and instead embracing the cyclical nature of time as understood by amaZulu.