Magda van der Vloed is a prolific, multifaceted artist in the contemporary South African art scene. She was raised in the quaint town of Jan Kempdorp in the Northern Cape, where her passion for creating was sparked by her father’s innovative creativity. This led to a life pursuing the need to use what surrounds her to make works inspired by her own personal narrative, as well as offering commentary on the contentious socio-political atmosphere of South Africa.

She went on to channel this burning desire to forge objects from her imagination into the world of ceramics, which she majored while studying Fine Arts at the University of Technology in Pretoria. Magda has experimented with an array of ceramic production methods, and her strength as a ceramist lies in the vast knowledge she has gathered over the years. Although clay is her first love, she expanded her artistic arsenal that included everything from telephone wire, transforming tapestries, recycled rubber to fish scales, wood and painting.

The versatility of mediums and inexhaustible creative energy served as a catalyst for her work as a product developer and designer for projects established by UNESCO, United Nations, African Craft Trust, CARE, CEDARTE and Aid to Artisans. Through her intrinsic understanding of material and emerging trends in the global design arena she has touched the lives of many skilled artisans around South Africa, Mozambique and Zambia. Her early works focused mainly on production, and thus fell into the commercialised aesthetic category. Moving past this, she found her own voice by treating the surface of whatever she was creating as a canvas, on which her thoughts and feelings were and still are projected. Magda is inspired by her heritage, utilising where she comes from to clarify where she’s going. She has also come to critically engage with the astounding levels of violence and political scandals that are crippling South Africa. Through the juxtaposition of elements that speak of tranquillity and love with death and corruption, she tries to process the conflicting sense of belonging and rejection of a South African identity.

She now practises ceramics and expressing herself through painting in her studio situated in the beautiful village of Rosendal, in the eastern Free State, close to the Lesotho border. In recent months LOADSHEDDING forced her once again to divert and used what’s accessible to her. She delved into her archive of collectable 1950’s nostalgic ceramic transfers, that she collected over years of Continental China ceramic factories closing down over the last couple of decades. Many which are recognised by us all as sentimental Sunday bests coming out of the cupboard over lunches after church. Such fond memories of an era gone past, now tainted by reality.

She expressed her disappointment at a failed state and government through her #vokeskom range of non-functional-ceramic-wall plates and some functional ware, by giving them an 8-carat gold-luster middle-finger. Eskom basically closed her career as a ceramic artist of more than 40 years, forcing her to adapt to a new challenge… painting. Whether it’s in enamel paint on ceramic plates (which is technically possible to fire in a shorter period of time because of the nature of the vintage ceramic transfers – 4,5 hours instead of 14 hours uninterrupted firing time for a normal glaze firing). This is not necessarily a bad thing; Magda is excited to explore the boundaries of this new medium and looking forward to the challenge the future holds! Be it in oil, enamel paint, painting over old transfers, embroidery, swearing on her art or just being herself in a peaceful Rosendal… planting vegetables and living the best life can offer… peace and not being silent of what’s happening in our beloved country!