Princess Pea: Works by Freya Bramble-Carter & Jean-Servais Somian” Online Summer Exhibition
Current exhibition
Overview
50 Golborne is delighted to present “Princess Pea”, our Summer Exhibition, which brings into dialogue the works of British ceramicist Freya Bramble-Carter and Ivorian designer-sculptor Jean-Servais Somian.
The title of the show is drawn from Bramble-Carter’s eponymous piece—a vessel she created in collaboration with her father, renowned ceramicist Chris Bramble. “Princess Pea,” the exhibition, indeed carries the atmosphere of a fairy tale, where vegetal and human worlds intermingle in joyous narratives and deeper symbolic stories.
While Bramble-Carter’s ceramics formally echo the motif of the classical Grecian vessel, she freely twists their shapes into forms that become floral or evocative of the human body. Infant-like sculpted heads emerge from the bellies of the vessels, glazed in hues of flesh, water, earth, or sky. Their surfaces are further adorned with painted or sculpted motifs—grass, flowers, plants, moons, and stars.
These vessels stem from a special project initiated by 50 Golborne, in which father and daughter, both ceramicists, explored their British-African diasporic inheritance and the notions of transmission and transformation. Bramble-Carter’s visual language resonates with the hybridity found in fairy tales, where boundaries between the human and vegetal blur, earth and cosmos influence one another, past and future merge, and girlishness coexists with the evocative violence of childbirth. For the artist, to be born is to be born hybrid—in a luminous, creolised world of continual mutation.
In many countries of the Global South, the coconut palm is a symbol of wonder—tall and slender, it yields drink, food, and abundant material for shelter. Somian’s vertical sculptures, carved from the resilient yet delicate coconut palm trunk, are inspired by the trees lining the road from Abidjan to his studio in Grand-Bassam on the Ivorian coast. Reimagining West African sculpture, his ongoing series “Les Demoiselles”, represented here by three pieces, are shaped by wind and sun, seemingly conversing with one another. They appear to emerge from a folk tale where the awe of nature is softened by anthropomorphism.
His deconstructed forms, lacquered in primary colours, blur the line between functional design and symbolic sculpture, as well as between object and human figure. They call to mind the magical world of Alice in Wonderland, where toys and things come alive. In “Grand Masque Perlé Blanc”, Somian deepens this exploration of wonder and reverence, assembling coconut palm wood to evoke the dramatic power of the African mask—a space where nature, spirit, and humanity converge.
The title “Les Demoiselles” adds yet another narrative layer. With a knowing reference to Picasso’s groundbreaking painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which heralded Cubism, Somian highlights the often-underacknowledged role of African totemic and animist sculpture in shaping Western modernity.
“Princess pea” explores themes of complex heritage, the hybridity of African and Western worlds, and a contemporary environmental consciousness. As descendants and custodians of rich artistic traditions, both Bramble-Carter and Somian use their chosen materials—clay and coconut wood—not only to preserve but to reimagine their inheritances, embodying the thematic and formal hybridity found in global fairy tales.
Works
Installation Views
