Tania Babb

Tania Babb was born in Zimbabwe, grew up in Mozambique and now creates her sculptures and teaches ceramics from her studio home in Cape Town, South Africa.  Tania likes to capture fleeting moments in clay, where a gesture reveals these depths and nature of these relationships, much like an author would reveal these depths with snippets of dialogue: Pets sit self-assured next to their owners on a couch, certain of a place in their hearts, women sit astride hulking African animals, totems of the power they have brought forth, women dance with wild abandon to music only they can hear, celebrating their freedom, couples stand arm in arm, but is he more reluctant than her?   

 Her art is about the powers of the female archetype and the inherent wisdom of women.  She identifies as an African artist for the continent’s subtle but persuasive energy which few tangibles have the power to describe.  Of African art and ceramics, Tania sees the “colors, the vibrancy, the fresh and new surfaces, the immediacy, (which) to me are all evidence of a rawness that I feel is unfettered and untampered by hundreds of years of civilization.” 

 Tania prefers to work in buttery porcelain which she feels has the feeling of human flesh, with all the vulnerability that being human implies. 

 Each piece is hand made.  Tania does not use moulds, therefore each sculpture is an original work of art, even though the motifs and themes which characterize her art echo through the collection. 

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