Magdalene Odundo
Xavier Hufkens is pleased to present Dame Magdalene Odundo’s first exhibition at the gallery, featuring a body of ceramic vessels alongside her monumental glass installation Transition II (2014). The exhibition highlights Odundo’s nearly five-decade engagement with the vessel as both form and metaphor. Her hand-built ceramics draw from a wide array of global traditions and the human body itself, which she views as a vessel in its own right. Crafted through a slow, physical process of coiling, burnishing and controlled firing, each unglazed piece retains a quiet porosity, allowing it to “breathe” with life. In contrast, Transition II, composed of 1001 suspended, mouth-blown glass vessels, embodies the collaborative nature of glassblowing and extends Odundo’s exploration of archetypal form, drawing inspiration from ancient Egyptian artefacts and interweaving historical, material and cross-cultural narratives.
Magdalene Odundo (b. 1950, Nairobi, Kenya) received her initial training as a graphic artist in Kenya before moving to the UK in 1971. She studied at the Cambridge School of Art (now Anglia Ruskin University), the University for the Creative Arts and the Royal College of Art. In 2018, Odundo was appointed Chancellor of the University for Creative Arts (UCA) and was made a Dame in the Queen’s New Year Honours list in 2020. She has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at Houghton Hall, Norfolk, England (2024); the Gardiner Museum, Toronto, Canada (2023-2024); The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, England and Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, England (2019); The High Museum of Art, Atlanta GA, USA (2017); British Council, Nairobi, Kenya (2005); Blackwell House, Bowness-on-Windermere, England (2001); The National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian, Washington D.C., USA (1995); Stedelijk Museum Voor Hedendaagse Kunst, s’Hertogenbosch, Netherlands (1994); Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany; and Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, Germany (1992).