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Umcimbi wendawo is a speculative installation that stages a ceremonial dinner table as a site of knowledge transmission. Referencing precolonial isiZulu gatherings, the work assembles vessels, textures, and spatial arrangements that evoke communal rituals of storytelling, teaching, and remembrance. The subtitle “before” suggests a temporal and spiritual threshold—gesturing towards ancestral epistemologies that existed prior to colonial disruption, and imagining how these knowledges can still nourish present and future conversations.

This work forms part of an ongoing exploration into how indigeneity can inform contemporary art practice as an epistemic framework. Through material, spatial, and symbolic gestures, the table becomes both archive and altar—a place where memory sits beside imagination.