African wall tapestries are rich in history and meaning, reflecting diverse cultural traditions and artistic expressions.
Kente Cloth: A Symbol of Unity and Diversity
This Kente cloth is deeply intertwined with the history of traditional Ashanti craft begun in the 18th century. The Republic of Ghana presented a Kente cloth, a traditional item from Ghana, to the United Nation in 2017 and had replaced the gift five times previously (1960, 1969, 1975, 1985, 1995), each iteration of the cloth with unique designs. It was presented on behalf of the President of the Republic of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, by Minister for Justice and Attorney General of the Republic of Ghana, Gloria Afua Akuffo.
It was woven by Amos Akwasi Gogo (2017 cloth), who mastered his craft under the tutelage of Andrew E. Asare Jr. (1995 cloth), son of the late A.E. This gift from Ghana is a unique piece comprising a combination of several designs and colours, signifying unity in diversity. One prominent pattern in this cloth is called “Adwene si Adwene so” which literally means “the meeting of minds”, that is, the interaction of different ideas and perspectives towards a common goal.
The colours woven in this cloth have symbolic meaning in Ghanaian societies. The dominant green colour stands for spiritual growth and renewal.
Originally Kente cloth, with its difficult-to-obtain dyes and elaborately woven designs, was made only for royalty. However, as imported rayon thread in bright colors and printed cloth became widely available, Kente-style cloth became available to commoners. Today Kente has become a symbol of the country of Ghana, where the Asante live.
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Kente Cloth Weaving Demonstration
Kente Cloth presented to the United Nations by Ghana.
The Keiskamma Art Project: Weaving Stories of Resilience
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Umaf’evuka, nje ngenyanga, dying and rising, as the moon does is a massive retrospective honoring and celebrating the politically astute and aesthetically stunning tapestries made by mainly Xhosa women weavers who live in Hamburg, South Africa - a town at the mouth of the Keiskamma River. The Keiskamma Art Project has been a thriving cultural force on the Eastern Cape since its inception in 2000.
Constitution Hill, the exhibition’s Johannesburg venue, is the former prison complex where Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and Mahatma Gandhi were once incarcerated. The institution has served as a living repository of South African history since its transformation into a museum in 2004. The maze-like space is a blend of original carceral architecture and contemporary renovations.
Complex motifs are elaborately stitched throughout each tapestry: ecological beauty; loss and survival; South African histories; politics and resistance.
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Keiskamma Guernica
“Keiskamma Guernica” (2010) takes up a large concrete wall in one room of the former men’s prison. The tapestry is a creative expression of mourning and resilience made from a blend of appliqué and embroidery with felt, rusted wire, metal tags, and beaded red ribbons, as well as repurposed textiles. Drawing from the imagery and symbolism of Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” (1937), Keiskamma’s take on the mammoth Modernist painting represents devastation and community perseverance due to the impact of HIV/AIDS on Hamburg. In a formidable gesture of transmutation, blankets and old clothes used by dying patients at the city’s hospice are repurposed in an artwork that commemorates deceased loved ones and their communities.
Rural South Africans suffering with AIDS-related complications were met with increased challenges in 2009 when the government made it illegal for local, non-governmental clinics to circulate antiretrovirals to their patients.
Biko Tapestry
Part of a series of tapestries on view in the women’s prison, its own separate building a short walk from the men’s, “Biko Tapestry” (2014) conjures Apartheid-era radical activism and its legacies. A combination of embroidery, appliqué, and South African dyed cotton fabric called isishweshwe, the tapestry is a tribute to the leftist icon and father of the Black Consciousness Movement, Steve Biko.
Ecological Reverence
Along with histories of mourning and perseverance, the Keiskamma artists are profoundly aware of the sacred relationship between humans and nature. Botanical and wildlife iconography flourish throughout the tapestries. Hamburg itself is an ideal destination for birdwatchers. One such bird, Intsikizi - the isiXhosa term for the South African ground hornbill - is historically sacred in Xhosa culture. The red and black bird is foregrounded in one tapestry, and various species of colorful birds abound in other tapestries, especially the six “Intsikizi Tapestries,” stitched in deep reverence for the ecological world and its serene abundance.
Viewers can (and really must) spend hours sauntering throughout the Keiskamma retrospective and reading about the countless patterns, designs, and symbols throughout the tapestries. The Xhosa women who create these works, such as Nozeti Makhubalo and Veronica Betani, both longstanding active members of the artist collective, experiment with needlework in such a way that narrates pertinent histories, moments of communal grief and vitality.
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Umaf’evuka, nje ngenyanga, dying and rising, as the moon does continues at Constitution Hill (11 Kotze St, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa) through March 24.
Ndebele Art: A Visual Language of Resistance
When surveying the sunbaked landscapes of South Africa, it is possible that the view may be interrupted by a disturbance of vivid, geometric pattern. These vibrant bursts are the houses of the Ndebele tribe, decorated in bold lines that encapsulate sharp proclamations of colour. Not to be confused with the Ndebele tribe of Zimbabwe, the Transvaal Ndebele of South Africa are composed of Northern and Southern groups, the latter of which is made up of Manala and Ndzundza populations. It’s the Ndzundza Transvaal Ndebele who are known for their striking wall painting and decadent beadwork.
The art found in the traditional homestead of the Ndebele people dates back to a thousand years and is evidenced by the rock art found in the Matopos attributed to the Khoi-San. In 2016 the US Ambassador's' fund for Cultural preservation (AFCP) awarded a grant to document the Ndebele traditional art form of hut painting and decoration.
During the 18th century, the Ndzundza Ndebele people of South Africa created their tradition and style of house painting. Until the late 1900s, the Ndebele noted warriors and large landowners. In the autumn of 1883, they went to war with the neighboring Boers. The loss of the war brought on a harsh life and horrible punishments for the Ndebele. Through those hard times, expressive symbols were generated by the suffering people expressing their grief. The expressive symbols were used for communication between sub-groups of the Ndebele people. They stood for their continuity and cultural resistance to their circumstances. The Boer farmers did not understand the meaning and viewed it as cultural art that was not harmful, so it was allowed to continue.
A Ndebele house in Mpumalanga, South Africa, showcasing vibrant geometric patterns.
The Ndebele tribe originally in the early 18th century lived in grass huts. They began using mud-walled houses in the mid-18th century when these symbols begin to be created on their houses and walls.
The vibrant symbols and expressions portray communications of personal prayers, self-identification, values, emotions, and marriage. Sometimes the male initiation, known as UkuWela (The Crossing), was a reason for repainting, but the ritual was not expressed. One quality of life that has never been expressed or directed through their walls is sacred expression. The rituals and religions have never been a part of the Ndebele's house paintings.
The Role of Women
The women of the Ndebele are often the traditional carriers and the main developer of the wall art of their home. The tradition and style of house painting are passed down in the families from generation to generation by the mothers. A well-painted home shows the female of the household as a good wife and mother. She is responsible for the painting of the outside gates, front walls, side walls, and usually the interior of her home.
Evolution of Style and Materials
At the beginning of house painting, their symbols and patterns were often based on Ndebele's beadwork. The patterns were tonal and painted with the women's fingers. The original paint on the house was a limestone whitewash. The colors added to make the paintings were mostly natural pigments consisting of browns, blacks, and others. Most of the patterns were of a V shape and a very simple triangle on a large shape color.
Over time, the colors and shape became a key aspect of the overall design. In the late 1968s, the new style was evident. What was once a finger-painted creation was now created using bundled twigs with feathers as brushes. The walls are still originally whitewashed, but the outlines and colors have significantly changed. The patterns and symbols can be seen today with a rich black outline and a vivid color inside. There are five main colors represented: red and dark red, yellow to gold, sky blue, green, and sometimes pink. The colors give an intensified symbolic meaning to the Ndebele. They can mean the status or power of the home's owners, offer prayer, announce a marriage in the home, or can represent a current protest.
The paintings express an abstract meaning with no real. This is the most direct way to show their expression to the people outside their far distinct family, showing the talent and the taste of the mother. The pink patterns are one of the most important aspects of their communication through painting. They are usually repeated throughout their design with only a very slight variation and different color choices. The geometric patterns and shapes are first drawn with the black outline and later filled in with color. The patterns are grouped throughout the walls in terms of their basic design structure.
Creating the right tools to allow accuracy and freedom become a difficult task. The tools can't restrict the painter from creating her art. They have to have tools for the large geometric shapes of flat color and small brushes for the very small areas, outlines, and sacks. These very simple-looking painted houses are a complex system of tradition and creation. This painted tradition is still alive today. As every generation passes it down little changes begin to exist. This is their way of communication and expression through their home.
Esther Mahlangu: A Modern Pioneer
Slowly, a new women-led culture began to emerge of painting homesteads with patches of colour, starkly delineated within black outlines. There is some debate over whether the particular design of this visual tradition is directly symbolic. While some researchers have tried to glean meaning from the shapes, others have accepted the decorative nature of the work. This is also a symptom of the colonial gaze of academia: the Ndebele community’s distrust of the other has resulted in an unwillingness to speak to researchers about such a personal manifestation of culture.
In recent years however, Dr Esther Mahlangu, an Ndebele artist, has brought visibility to the culture on her own terms, even bridging the gap with academia by being awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Johannesburg. Mahlangu’s colour-rich, boundary straddling designs are directly derived from Ndebele visual tradition. She learned how to paint murals from the age of 10, keen to follow in the footsteps of her mother and grandmother.
Mahlangu began to transition from walls to canvas as her medium of choice, and her practice evolved to adorn found objects such as war helmets, motorbikes and mannequins with the signature Ndebele visual language. Mahlangu describes the “straight lines and balance of each piece” as “non negotiable… an essential part of Ndebele painting”.
She has certainly gained visibility, from painting BMW’s signature art car to embellishing the tails of British Airways planes. The Ndebele patterns have leapt from the walls of their homes into a global phenomenon. The Ndebele visual tradition has inspired many a muralist, from urban wall artists in Africa, to the acclaimed French artist Camille Walala. The simplicity of the geometric shapes make them ripe for appropriation, and often the motifs are used to integrate a particularly African or ethnic identity into existing styles.
To return to the idea of Ndebele homesteads as a declaration of territory, is to recognise that land is political. South Africa’s history is steeped in entrenched ideas of race, battles over territory and against this backdrop, a fervent need to preserve cultural identity. The emboldening of Ndebele traditions through beadwork, clothing, ceremony and mural art is not only a form of resistance, but a bid to claim space.
El Anatsui: Transforming Waste into Art
Old Man’s Cloth hangs like a large tapestry, but when we look closer, it’s easy to become captivated by the small metal fragments that comprise the work in hundreds. Arranged within a shifting grid of stripes and blocks of color, the components form their own internal maps across the surface, melding into vertical gold bands, interlocking black, and silver rows, or a deviant red piece floating in a field of black. While Old Man’s Cloth would have been laid flat during its construction, it is contorted and manipulated during installation, so that the individual metal pieces can catch the light from every angle.
Old Man’s Cloth has been constructed from flattened liquor bottle labels that the artist collects near his home in southern Nigeria. While critics often write about El Anatsui’s metal wall hangings using the language of textiles, the labels and bottle caps are typically fastened together with copper wire and attached corner-to-corner. As such, the issue of medium is one of the first to inspire debate amongst viewers-are the wall hangings two-dimensional or three-dimensional? Are they sculptures, even as they hang against the wall like paintings? Are they individual works or immersive installations?
Purposefully disregarding the limited categories imposed by Western art history, Anatsui’s practice emerges from a more expanded understanding of what art can be that stems from both the radical practices of the late 1960s and from a vantage point outside of the Western tradition completely. Anatsui’s choice of discarded liquor bottle caps as a medium has as much to do with their formal properties as with their historical associations. As an African artist whose career was forged during the utopia of mid-century African independence movements, his work has always engaged his region’s history and culture.
The bottle caps, for Anatsui, signify a fraught history of trade between Africa and Europe. Alcohol was one of the commodities brought with [Europeans] to exchange for goods in Africa. Eventually alcohol become one of the items used in the transatlantic slave trade. They made rum in the West Indies, took it to Liverpool, and then it made its way back to Africa. The luminescent gold colors also recall the colonial past of Anatsui’s home country-modern Ghana was previously a British colony called The Gold Coast until its independence in 1957. The fluid movements of the work’s surface remind us of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, which carried slave ships and traders between Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
Old Man’s Cloth was included in one of Anatsui’s first exhibitions of hanging metal sculptures. Held at London’s October Gallery in 2004, the show was entitled “Gawu,” which means “metal cloak” in Ewe. El Anatsui was born in Ghana in 1944 and was trained in an academic European curriculum. In 1964, when he began his studies, many parts of Africa were experiencing a cultural renaissance associated with decolonization movements. Anatsui himself joined the unofficial Sankofa movement, which was invested in unearthing and reclaiming Africa’s rich indigenous traditions and assimilating these with the European-influenced aspects of society.
In 1975, Anatsui joined the faculty at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Anatsui’s work differed slightly from that of his colleagues in his insistence on abstraction. In some of his first mature works, he used an electric chainsaw to slash geometric patterns into wood. When two of Anatsui’s metal wall hangings appeared in the 2007 Venice Biennale, they were lauded by the public and swiftly cemented his place as a leading international contemporary artist. He had, in fact, already shown in Venice almost two decades earlier in 1990, when he participated in a small exhibition surveying contemporary African art.
As such, his work provides an excellent opportunity for discussion about the relationships between artists at the center and at the periphery, and between the West and the Global South. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for instance, has now acquired two of Anatsui’s metal wall hangings, but they are owned by two different curatorial departments: the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, and Modern and Contemporary Art. Both were on view at the same time, but in separate galleries. Visitors, students, and art historians should continue to ask themselves which designation seems more appropriate, and for what reasons. Should we understand his art as a product of its place, its time, or both?
Other Notable Artists and Projects
- Allina Ndebele: Started as a weaver at Rorke's Drift Centre and established Khumalo's Kraal Weaving Workshop in 1980.
- Keiskamma Trust: Formed in 2000 as a skills development project, known for the Keiskamma Tapestry and Keiskamma's Guernica.
- Papa Ibra Tall: Head of the 'Section de Recherches Plastiques Negres' and set up a tapestry workshop in 1966.
- William Kentridge: Produced tapestries in collaboration with the Marguerite Stephens Tapestry Studio in Swaziland.
- Rachid Koraichi: A multi-disciplinary artist, known for his tapestry 'Lettre bleue a ma Mere'.
- Igshaan Adams: Creates free form sculptures and installation pieces using various materials.
- Kimathi Mafafo: Works with embroidery, paint, and installation pieces, celebrating black women-hood.
- Derrick Adams: Raises sociopolitical questions through weaving and textile art.
- Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude: Blends diverse shapes and textures into contemporary tapestries.
- Bet Butkow: Creates abstracted works with undefined borders using various mediums.
- Mary Ann Orr: Transforms found and rejected materials into art, drawing upon San spirituality.
