A Collaborative Installation by Mash.T, THEURBANATIVE and Hoven
You couldn’t have convinced us otherwise – Cape Town Furniture Week needed a Jo’burger on its stoep.
So we did what any self-respecting, slightly stubborn, deeply collaborative Joburg creator and creative would do: we built a make-believe world and brought it south.
We called it the Totemic Field.
Presented in collaboration with THEURBANATIVE and curated with Hoven, Totemic Field introduced new prototypes by Mash.T and THEURBANATIVE, exploring modularity as both structure and philosophy. The installation highlighted circularity, collaboration and respect for the many hands involved in their making – principles central to contemporary South African design practice.
Conceived as an intimate installation rather than a spectacle, Totemic Field created space for dialogue and exchange during Cape Town Furniture Week – inviting collectors, designers and collaborators into conversation around craftsmanship, intention and modular design systems.
But as much as Totemic Field explored modular furniture and structure, it also quietly revealed something about how we work – and how we build.
What We Know For Sure
If you were raised on Oprah Winfrey, you’ll know her phrase: What I know for sure is…
What we know for sure is this: one of our greatest privileges – and perhaps our most unfair advantage as Africans – is that we will never qualify as “self-made.”
The fingerprints of it takes a village were all over Totemic Field at Cape Town Furniture Week. Not dramatically. Not loudly. In the quiet, practical ways that matter.
People showing up. People offering space. People lending skills. People sharing resources. People allowing us to leverage their assets. People asking hard questions. People carrying boxes. People pouring drinks. People staying late.
Where we come from, community gathering around a vision isn’t exceptional. It’s normal.
The team at Cape Heritage Hotel – management, marketing, front desk, facilities and security – treated the work with care. That attentiveness cannot be manufactured; it is chosen.
Our friends at Marble Cape Town fed our guests the way we know how to feed people here – generously and instinctively.
Waterford Estate, Ses’fikile Wines, Hope Distillery and Graham Beck reminded us that when you pay attention to your surroundings – soil, climate, context – you can create something world-class without pretending to be somewhere else.
Belgotex and Yudu extended the life of the installation by gifting the rugs to Bridges for Music in Langa. Circulation, not accumulation.
And then there were the visitors – built environment professionals, design practitioners, business owners, collectors, media and friends who chose to spend time inside the installation. Who lingered. Who asked questions. Who offered insight. Who encouraged. That choice matters more than we often acknowledge. We recognize that time is not neutral and attention is not casual, particularly during a week filled with so many competing events and conversations.
It would be easy to call all of this generosity. But it is also fuel. When building work that does not yet fully exist, having people come alongside you – offering encouragement, sharing resources, giving correction, adding perspective – steadies you. It reminds you that the work is not happening in isolation, but within a living design culture.
Totemic Field may have been a study in modular design.
But it was also a reminder that we, too, are modular. Independent, yes – but strengthened through relationships.
So no, we are not self-made. We are held. We are challenged. We are supported. We are sharpened by others.
And what we know for sure is this:
The field only exists because many hands chose to stand in it with us.
