Exhibition Preview
The Essential Art of African
Textiles
Design Without End
Alisa LaGamma
Michael C. Rockefeller Wing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
October 1, 2008March 22, 2009
The exhibition is made possible in part
by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,
Fred and Rita Richman, and The Ceil &
Michael C. Pulitzer Foundation, Inc, and
was organized by The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, in collabora-
tion with the British Museum, London
88 | african arts spring 2009
T
o paint a picture of a real and present Africa in
Dakar as in Bamako, Accra, or Lagos is to cap-
ture their dynamic marketplaces ablaze with color.
Across the continent, these living tableaus that are
the epicenters of their communities are defined by
a lyrical cacophony of designs and hues. The fabrics
of such immense collages of humanity constitute scores of acts
of aesthetic self-determination predicated on the rich variety of
ways in which cloth has been elaborated.
The very textiles that animate these human arenas are one of
the major commodities exchanged. Their importance as an item
of trade is as apparent now as it was when the earliest commercial
networks joining North Africa with regions south of the Sahara
were developed in the first centuries ce. Given their portabil-
ity, textiles have been the ultimate vehicle through which human
creative ingenuity has traveled long distances. Their dissemina-
tion has provided a conduit for the transfer of ideas across cul-
tures and has been the spark to renewed creativity.
Inherent to this medium is its capacity to seamlessly adapt to
change and newly emerging social realities. Unlike so many sculp-
tural forms of expression that have come to epitomize Africas
artistic heritage in the West, textile traditions have not only per-
sisted as a form of expression across the continent, they have pro-
liferated. The constant renewal of regional textile genres attests
to their continued relevance and fulfillment of ongoing cultural
needs and desires. In their most exalted manifestations they have
been conceived as immense architectural elements that enliven
and define interior space or voluminous garments that envelop
the body in layer upon layer of ostentatious folds. Whatever their
intent, their design is fundamentally informed by the expansive
template of strip-woven textiles whose composition of contigu-
ous bands of design may repeat themselves or introduce variation.
Beyond their graphic definition, a critical dimension of their aes-
thetic impact is flowing movement. Never viewed as rigidly two-
dimensional, they are responsive to wind and the human form.
Despite the vitality and resilience of this idiom of expression
that punctuates the experiences of every-day life as well as those
of an exalted and extraordinary nature, African textiles have not
received their full due in Western cultural institutions.
Conversely, many contemporary artists meaningfully engaged
with this heritage have harnessed its visual language in their own
creations in distinct media, presented here through sculpture,

installation art, photography, prints, and video. In evoking this
aesthetic and visual vocabulary, they have reflected on its essen-
tial character as well as the underlying significance of this mate-
rial. Their insightful quotations of textiles associated with Africas
experience at once enhance our appreciation of their classical
sources of inspiration and eloquently bridge the divide between
traditional and contemporary expression. The Essential Art have been springboards for other designs. The formidable litera-
of African Textiles: Design Without End is not a systematic sur-
vey; instead, it has been conceived as a far-ranging conversation
that seeks to bridge barriers created by the characterization of
art appreciated by the Western avant-garde as fine and one that
has profoundly informed expression in Africa as applied. The
African canvases constructed, composed, and elaborated that are
featured have been selected for their extraordinary artistic cali-
ber and resonance at once formally and conceptually with works
by the contemporary artists who reference them. At the same
time these examples of classical genres that relate to ongoing
textile traditions were selected for their early collection dates to
underscore their longevity in relation to the highly personal idi-
oms of the contemporary works. Many of these now preserved
in the collection of the British Museum were originally collected
during the nineteenth century as part of market research under-
taken by European colonial powers eager to expand the demand
for their own industrially manufactured cloth. Most importantly,
however, they are original artistic explorations of sophisticated
visual paradigms. The more we examine them the more it is
indisputable that what may appear as dynamically improvisa-
1 Kente prestige cloth
Ghana; Ewe peoples
19th century
Cotton, silk; warp 188cm, weft 279cm (74"
x 9' 2")
Lent by The British Museum, London
(Af1934,0307.165)
Provenance: Collected in West Africa between
1880 and 1900 by Charles Beving Sr.
Richly elaborated and costly kente textiles,
identified with wealth and status, are
the ultimate attribute of prestige in both
Ewe and Asante societies. These glorious
fabrics were worn as voluminous toga-like
garments draped majestically around the
body to mark special occasions. During the
eighteenth century Asante weavers radically
expanded the palette drawn upon for such
creations by unraveling silks imported along
the coast for their richly hued threads. In
order to execute such monumental works,
the very long fabric woven on a double
heddle horizontal treadle loom is cut at
fixed intervals to produce a series of strips
that are sewn together selvage to selvage.
A mans cloth typically requires twenty-four
such strips. In this example, the strips come
from seven loomed lengths, each with a dif-
ferent warp arrangement. The resulting ver-
tical stripes present rhythms of repetition
that are not immediately discernable. To fur-
ther vary the pattern, the colorfully striped
asymmetrical strips are set in opposite
directions so that they mirror each other.
tional and spontaneously exuberant expressions are inspired by
carefully considered choreographed, disciplined, and controlled
responses to precedents.
The history of textiles across the continent has been a vital and
richly innovative one that has contributed to the development
of a myriad of distinct genres of cloth and design which in turn
ture on African textiles, pioneered by Roy Sieber in a landmark
1972 Museum of Modern Art exhibition African Textiles and
Decorative Arts and followed by the 1979 survey African Tex-
tiles by John Picton and John Mack, provides a substantial foun-
dation for an appreciation of the technical and regional practices
that have informed these textile traditions. The examples of
major textile genres cited by Picton and Mack in their seminal
volume are drawn from the British Museums incomparable col-
lection of African textiles, which is also the source of many of
the works featured in this presentation. This exhibition of some
fifty works includes an array of Africas key textile genres placed
in dialogue with works by eight contemporary artists. Within
the free-flowing structure of the installation, different media are
examined against the backdrop of extraordinarily fine textile
creations. Throughout those juxtapositions, the conceptual and
technical processes drawn upon to imagine and execute each of
these forms of expression is examined. The oeuvre of the con-
temporary artists featured is considered from the vantage point
of their relationship to cloth and their reflections on the signifi-
cance of that medium.
spring 2009 african arts
| 89
 El Anatsui (b. 1944, Ghanaian)
The scope of meaning associated with cloth is so wide I have not
heard it more aptly and succinctly put than by Sonya Clark that
cloth is to the African what monuments are to Westerners. Indeed
their capacity and application to commemorate events, issues, per-
sons, and objectives outside of themselves are so immense and fluid
it even rubs off on other practices (2003).
The son and brother of men who wove Ewe kente cloth in Gha-
nas Volta region, Anatsui has used textiles as a leitmotif in his own
sculptural oeuvre. As a student at Kwame Nkrumah University
of Science and Technology in Kumasi (KNUST), Anatsui supple-
mented his training in Western media with careful observation
of the creative efforts of local artisans in regional idioms. Like
humanists in the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries who
carefully studied the visual language of Greek and Roman classi-
cism and applied it to their own particular subject matter, Anatsui
is a twenty-first century master intensely aware of Africas art his-
torical traditions who infuses them with new life and meaning.
90 | african arts spring 2009
Over the course of a career that has spanned forty years, Anat-
sui has been a pioneer in identifying and harvesting a variety of
natural and man-made materials from his immediate environ-
ment as media for radically new sculptural genres. His materi-
als have included tropical hardwood, broken ceramic pots, grain
mortars, evaporated milk tin lids, cassava graters, driftwood,
and most recently discarded liquor-bottle caps. In the late 1990s,
Anatsui developed a form of metal textiles or tapestries. Using
the bottle caps discarded by Nigerian distilleries as an experi-
mental material, he sorted them by color, flattened them, and
stitched them together with copper wire. In doing so he found
that he had arranged them in a manner reminiscent of the struc-
ture of narrow-band textiles woven in West Africa. With this
dazzling body of work he has developed a new and highly origi-
nal form of artistry with formal and conceptual links to regional
traditions. Since 1975 Anatsui has lectured at the University of
Nigeria, Nsukka, where he is Professor of Sculpture. An interna-
tionally acclaimed artist, he was among Africas first contempo-
rary artists to be featured at the Venice Biennale, in 1990.
(opposite)
2 El Anatsui (b.1944, Ghanaian)
Between Earth and Heaven (2006)
Aluminum, copper wire; 220.3cm x 325.1cm
(86" x 128")
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase,
Fred M. and Rita Richman, Noah-Sadie K.
Wachtel Foundation Inc., David and Holly
Ross, Doreen and Gilbert Bassin Family Foun-
dation and William B. Goldstein Gifts, 2007
(2007.96)

In this work, the classic kente textile tradition

produced by Asante and Ewe weavers has
been subjected to a complete transforma-
tion and yet is recognizable in vestigial form.
Through the animated surface of a sculptural
idiom Anatsui calls attention to the dynamism
of Ghanaian textiles, whose shimmering lumi-
nosity, dense composition, and immense rip-
pling presence viscerally engage the viewer

(this page)
3 Atta Kwami (b. 1956, Ghanaian)
Juapong (2006)
Relief print on paper; 35.6cm x 24.9cm (14"
x 9")
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase,
Janet Lee Kadesky Ruttenberg Fund, in
honor of Colta Ives, 2008 (2008.293.1)

This print is one of series named after Ewe

towns in Ghanas Volta Region, where weav-
ing is practiced and the artist was raised.
The titles of the seriesKpong, Kpetoe,
Vane, Tsito, and Juapongwere
selected for their association with textile
design as well as their sonorous musical
quality.

Atta Kwami (b. 1956, Ghanaian)

Over time, I have been better able to embody those aspects of my
everyday life which have the greatest significance: kiosks, commercial
(sign) painting, woven textiles, Ghanaian music (Koo Nimo) and
jazz, all of which allow for serial composition in strips, stripes, grids.
I have focused on color as my subject matter, perhaps taking me back
to where I started with the perception of my mothers paints and tex-
tiles, but my art also resonates, I have seen, with the wider world of
color formalist painters, such as Piet Mondrian, Mark Rothko, Sean
Scully, and Ellsworth Kelly (Kumasi, January 2008).
Atta Kwami draws inspiration from the sensory stimuli of
his adopted urban environment of Kumasi, the cultural capital
of the Asante region. His abstract imagery is a synthesis of ele-
ments: pulsating musical rhythms, the citys dynamic entrepre-
neurial landscape, and the vibrant designs and intense colors
of regional textile traditions. While he has regularly produced
large-scale installation works, he imbues meaning into the small
visual detail as one might isolate a musical chord or interlude.
Atta Kwami has combined his work as a fine artist with his
desire to chronicle Ghanaian art history. The subject of his soon
to be published doctoral thesis is Kumasi Painting 19512007. His
mother, Grace Salome Kwami, a gifted artist and educator, served
as a critical formative influence. A sculptor, weaver, and painter,
she submitted watercolors and gouaches to Ghanaian textile
manufacturers in the 1960s. At the prestigious Achimota School,
Atta Kwami studied weaving, among other art subjects, with an
Ewe master. Kwami holds degrees in painting and art history
from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
(KNUST) in Kumasi, the Royal College of Art in London, and
The Open University, Milton Keynes, in the UK, and a diploma
from the Royal College of Art, London. For over twenty years he
was senior lecturer of painting and printmaking at KNUST. His
work is exhibited internationally and he has served as a major
catalyst for bringing together Ghanas fine arts community.

spring 2009 african arts

| 91
 4 Arkilla kereka interior hanging
Niger, Tillaberi; Fulani peoples
First half of the 20th century
Wool, cotton, natural dye; warp 411.5cm, weft 127cm (13' 6" x 50")
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Labelle Prussin,
1997 (1997.446.1)
Provenance: Purchased by Labelle Prussin from a Hausa trader in
Accra, Ghana in 1971

Cloths of this grandeur served as tent dividers and marriage-bed

hangings. Such creations were the most costly textiles produced
in the Niger Bend region and were almost always woven on com-
mission. Their aesthetic reflects the cosmopolitan engagement of
weavers south of the Sahara with the formal vocabulary of North
African textile traditions. Berber women weave wool textiles for
clothing on a wide vertical loom thought to be of pre-Arabic origin,
and the closely related geometric designs they produce occur in
bands across the weft. In the Western Sudan, however, men weave
wool textiles on double-heddle looms, and the long narrow fabric
that is produced is cut into strips that are stitched together to form
the completed cloth. In order to reproduce the effect of the North
African cloths through this different technical process, the weaver
had to calculate accurately the distance between motifs so that
they would match up once the strips were aligned. With its designs
exactly repeated and perfectly synchronized, the resulting cloth
becomes a flawless continuum of dense pattern.

92 | african arts spring 2009


Seydou Keta (1921(?)2001, Malian)
my first backdrop was my bedspread. After that, I changed the
backdrop every two or three years: this is how I can now establish the
dates of the negatives Sometimes the backdrop went well with the
clothes, particularly for the women (Bamako, August 1994).
The studio photographer Seydou Keta was an eloquent chroni-
cler of the aspirations of a new urban elite in Malis capital during
the 1940s and 50s. During this period of immense economic and
demographic growth, the population more than doubled. In this
context, he was one of a number of self-taught individuals who
launched businesses as commercial portrait photographers in
Bamako. Beginning in 1948 his studio was situated at the heart of
the city, not far from the train station, the large market (le March
Rose), and the cinema (Soudan Cin). The lan and aesthetic
appeal of Ketas work reflects his gifts in choreographing a mise en
scne that ideally captured his subjects individual character with
elegance and composure. Keta shot in black and white and devel-
oped his own 13cm x 18cm negatives as prints of the same size.
5 Seydou Keta (1921(?)2001, Malian)
Untitled portrait [Seated Woman with Chevron Print
Dress] (1956, print 1997)
Gelatin silver print; 60.96cm x 50.8cm (24" x 20")
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Joseph
and Ceil Mazer Foundation Inc. Gift, 1997
(1997.364)
The leaf-patterned cloth backdrop was used by Keta
for sittings throughout 1956. Its striking juxtaposi-
tion with the sitters printed dress plays her aesthetic
against the photographers pictorial conceit.
Despite his restricted palette, textiles dominate as vibrant formal
elements. These include the various fabric backdrops he selected
as well as the personal sense of style evident in the fashions worn
by the female sitters. In combination, these lively contrasting pat-
terns create a distinctive and dynamic visual tension.
According to Keta, the qualities evident in his work that
attracted his clientele were his emphasis on capturing crisp
detail, sharpness and clarity of line, and masterfully calibrated
composition. These commissioned portraits, carefully calculated
to reflect the cosmopolitanism of their subjects, were originally
intended for intimate viewing in their subjects homes. Keta
closed his studio in the early 1960s when he was called upon to
serve the newly independent Malian state as official government
photographer. In the 1990s large-format prints were produced
from the original negatives in Paris. The names of the individu-
als immortalized in these images are for the most part lost, as
Ketas archives of his negatives did not record the identities of
the thousands of clients who passed through his studio.
spring 2009 african arts
| 93
6 Malick Sidib (b. 1936, Malian)
Untitled [Portrait of a Woman Standing Before a Striped
Background] (1979)
Gelatin silver print; 14cm x 8.9cm (5" x 3")
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Nancy Lane
Gift, 2003
(2003.160)

The formal tension that is the focus of this portrait is the

layering of the striped cloth of the studio backdrop with
those worn by the subjects. The design of the womans
wax print that unfolds in vertical columns the length of
her skirt echoes and contrasts with the controlled struc-
ture of her environment.

Malick Sidib (b. 1936, Malian)

In the studio I liked working on composition. The photographers
relationship with his subject happens through touch. Arranging
the person, finding the right profile, the right lighting to highlight
their features, bring out the beauty in their bodies Id find posi-
tions and postures that suited each person, I had my own tactics
(Bamako, 1998).
Malick Sidibs photography uniquely captured the youthful
exuberance of post-Independence Malian society. At an early
age his natural talent for drawing was identified, and his artis-
tic education began in 1952 at the Maison des Artisans Souda-
nais in Bamako. He subsequently transferred that sensibility for
representing the world around him to developing a command
of the photographic medium by observing the practice of the
French studio photographer Grard Guillot. Sidib opened his
own studio in the Bagadadji district of Bamako in 1962. His own
photographic record is distinctive, however, for his movement
between portrait photography and event-driven coverage of the
way the youth of Bamako spent their leisure time.
The appeal of this fresh and energetic subject matter led to his
tireless pursuit of documenting social gatherings, ranging from
the club scene animated by rock-and-roll and soul to excursions
down the Niger. His images reflect the sheer joie de vivre and
insouciance of their protagonists during this period of Africas
transition to modernity in the 1960s and 70s. Whether he was
in the studio or at a dance, his keen eye for spontaneity and for
imaginative clothes and attitudes afford his imagery originality
and a distinctive style. While his formative attachment was to
black-and-white photography, in recent years he has worked in
both black-and-white and color for the French fashion maga-
zines Vogue, Elle, Cosmopolitan, and Double. Sidib received the
Hasselblad Award for Photography in 2003, the Venice Bien-
nales Golden Lion for lifetime achievement award in 2007, and
the ICP Infinity Award for lifetime achievement in 2008.

94 | african arts spring 2009

7 Adinkra ceremonial wrapper
Ghana, Brong-Ahafo region, Mim village; Akan
peoples, Asante group
First quarter of the 20th century
Cotton, indigo dye, wax; warp 232cm, weft 112cm
(91"x 44")
Lent by The British Museum, London (Af1935,1005.2)
Provenance: Purchased by A. F. Kerr in the village
of Mim, Brong-Ahafo region, Ghana in March 1934.
Presented by Kerr to the British Museum in 1935
In Akan society, adinkra cloth underscores the
relationship between the living and ancestors, the
present and the future, concerns of the moment and
those of the hereafter. Worn wrapped around the
body like a toga to mark various occasions ranging
from funerals to festive occasions, their compositions
are conceived of as visual texts. Once the founda-
tional cloth has been selected, its surface is systemati-
cally subdivided into a grid through the application
of a dark pigment, prepared from tree bark and
iron slag, with a comb-like instrument. Within each
square a single abstract or representational motif is
rendered with a stamp. More than fifty-three of these
named visual motifs, imbued with historical, cultural,
and mystical significance, have been recorded. The
author of a particular cloth selects which ones will be
depicted and how they will be arranged across the
pictorial field. This example features at least thirteen
distinct signs ranging from a concentric circle, consid-
ered to be of paramount importance among designs,
to double rams horns associated with leadership,
strength, and humility.
spring 2009 african arts
| 95
8 Grace Ndiritu (b. 1976, British)
The Nightingale (2003)
Video; 7 minutes 01 second
Collection of the artist
In this work the manipulation of a textile affords the
individual portrayed with a spectrum of possibilities
that range from concealing her presence to actively
transforming her identity. In an opening sequence
the undulating, shifting, and rippling movements of
the fabric cause it to appear to be an independently
animate entity.
Grace Ndiritu (b. 1976, British)
seeing the Royal Academy exhibition Matisse: The Fabric of
Dreams His Art and His Textiles reaffirmed the similarity of our
working process we share the ritual of assembling textiles and
setting up the studio with fabrics as a background to galvanize our
artistic practice. Matisse understands and appreciates the beauty
and simplicity of working with textiles. The hallucinogenic proper-
ties of overlapping patterns shift and swell in his paintings, override
perspective and divorce shape from color. His paintings appear to
expand the viewers eye and mind By wrapping my body within
textiles I extend Matisses methodology of transforming both the
figure and patterns into a single pictorial plane. By loading pat-
terns upon patterns I also create and control tensions with the
fabrics that provoke a transcendental experience (London, 2005).
Grace Ndiritu boldly relies on her own physical presence as
the central agent of her evocative artistry. Her handcrafted vid-
eos are highly personal and introspective solo performances in
front of a camera fixed on a tripod. Although Ndiritu studied
96 | african arts spring 2009
textile art at the Winchester School of Art in the UK, she was
never interested in designing fabrics. Instead she came to exploit
textiles as a meaningful vehicle for creative expression following
journeys of self-discovery extending from the Himalayas to Ice-
land and from India to Mali. During those nomadic explorations
she derived a basic level of personal security from a simple scarf
that makes its appearance in her video The Nightingale.
Raised and based in Britain while of Kenyan heritage, Ndiritus
experience has instilled in her a lack of affiliation with any one
place and a belief in the importance of obtaining an awareness of
as broad a spectrum of experiences as possible. Her experiences
outside the West have led her to reflect on the way that art else-
where is more seamlessly a part of every-day life, as in the way
she found textiles to be integrated into Malian society. In draw-
ing from that tradition, she has sought to manipulate textiles as
vehicles for eliciting emotional responses and as objects of aes-
thetic contemplation in concert with the body. Among Ndiritus
international presentations of her work has been a solo exhibi-
tion at the 2005 Venice Biennale.
9 Sokari Douglas Camp, CBE (b. 1958, British)
Nigerian Woman Shopping (1990)
Steel; 180cm x 66cm x 83cm (71" x 26" x 32")
Lent by Packman Lucus Collection, London

This faceless woman would be invisible were it

not for the bold stars and crescents of the cloth
wrapped around her. The design deliberately evokes
a popular Dutch wax print whose star-and-crescent-
moon pattern, produced in bold yellow and blue,
derived from Arab sources and is now rendered for a
West African clientele by the Dutch textile company
Vlisco.

Sokari Douglas Camp, CBE (b. 1958, British)

Kalabari culture revolves around cloth, especially
for women. Our heirlooms are cloth. A key concern
is how much important cloth you have to clothe the
family for big occasions, funerals, births, marriages.
We lay cloth out for wakes, covering rooms, beds, and
even the deceased. When the body is buried a display
of the cloth used for the wake is exhibited for a week
with coral and jewelry. As a girl I graduated from
beads to wearing a dress and subsequently additional
cloths over time. The way the cloth is wrapped around
ones body and the height of it depended on ones age
and importance. So I was always very conscious of
fabric. Some cloths (prints) can not be worn in some
areas of my town during important occasions.
As an artist I like figures that are clothed The dif-
ferent styles of clothing and textiles in Nigeria and
Europe [as well as] the fabrics that cross cultures
have been features in my work The tactile qualities
in fabrics and the way the material is worn is fasci-
nating to me (London 2007).

Trained at the Royal College of Art and working

in the UK, Sokari Douglas Camp is keenly engaged
with the cultural life of the Kalabari people of Nige-
ria, where she spent her early childhood. Douglas
Camp has regularly revisited the scene of her forma-
tive years and made it a major subject of her artistic
explorations.
As a female artist who expresses herself in the
physically demanding medium of welded metals, Douglas Camp
occupies a unique place. Her expansive sculptural portrayals dis-
till their subjects physicality to essential features. These hollowed
representations omit certain aspects of the body and exactingly
define others through cutting out two-dimensional designs from
sheets of metal. Although Douglas Camps work is predominantly
figurative in nature, it emphasizes the abstract forms of negative
space so that blouses, textile wrappers, and tied headgear are ren-
dered elegantly as openwork shells. In doing so she endows these
solid armatures with a whimsical lightness and grace. She has also
sought to infuse sculpture with a sense of vitality through evoking
movement both by introducing kinetic features and underscoring
the performative and active dimension of her subjects.
Douglas Camp moves easily between the Niger Delta and
London so that her oeuvre visually summons individuals she has
observed in Buguma festivals or Brixton markets. Best known
for her evocations of regional masquerade festivals, her work has
responded to events that have unfolded in the Niger Delta that
are of universal import. These have included the tragic execution
of the author Ken Saro Wiwa, the ecological disasters that have
resulted from oil exploitation in the Niger Delta, and the legacy
of the slave trade. Many of the female subjects alluded to in her
sculptures reflect the Kalabari aesthetic practice of widening the
lower body through wrapping it in multiple layers of cloth. Both
the considerable heft of a substantial corporeal being and the lav-
ish use of costly textiles are favored for their identification with
prosperity and abundance. Douglas Camp further insists on the
inherent aesthetic qualities of textiles by highlighting their deco-
rative patterns and suggesting their flowing movements in the
most inflexible of media.

spring 2009 african arts

| 97

Yinka Shonibare, MBE (b. 1962, British)
In 1990 I developed another way of questioning ideas about cul-
tural authenticity. I started to use African fabric purchased from
Brixton Market in my work. Batik, which is commonly known as
African fabric, has its origins in Indonesia and is industrially
produced in Holland and Manchester for export to Africa, where
it is made into traditional dress. The adoption of the fabric, par-
ticularly in West Africa, has led to the development of local indus-
tries which also manufacture fabrics In my own practice, I have
used the fabrics as a metaphor for challenging various notions of
authenticity both in art and identity (London, 1996).
Yinka Shonibares use of industrially manufactured Dutch
wax prints in his work reflects on the most recent chapter of
the history of trade between Africa and the West, the nature of
that relationship, and assumptions about creativity and identity.
Shonibares sharp insights into this history reflect his own per-
sonal trajectory of being born in England to Nigerian parents,
spending formative years of his youth in Lagos, and pursuing
his vocation as an artist in Britain. With thoughtful ingenuity,
visual poetry, satirical humor, and aesthetic panache his work
subverts misconceptions about racial, class, and cultural identity
and distinctions between high and low art. Trained as a painter
and a graduate of Goldsmiths College of the University of Lon-
don, Shonibare has developed his ideas in a variety of media that
include installation art, photography, and film. In each of these,
he has drawn upon cloth as a prominent formal element that
suggests to the viewer that things are not what they may appear
to be at first glance. His use of this complex signifier has ranged
from austerely stretching it as a canvas to lavish deployment in
theatrical tableaux that foil established icons of Western culture.
In 2004 Shonibare was nominated for the Turner Prize and
in 2005 was awarded the title Member of the British Empire in
recognition of his service to the nation. Most recently his pro-
posal for a public sculpture for the Fourth Plinth site in Londons
Trafalgar Square was selected and in Fall 2008 his work was the
focus of a mid-career retrospective organized by the Museum
of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia and traveling to the
Brooklyn Museum, New York.
98 | african arts spring 2009
10 Wrapper
Senegal
Second half of the 19th century
Cotton, indigo dye; 152cm x 224cm (60" x L.
88")
Lent by The British Museum, London
(Af1934,0307.246)
Provenance: Collected in West Africa between
18801900 by Charles Beving, Sr.
At first glance this cloth, composed of conjoined
vertical units, appears to be an example of strip-
weaving. This is, however, an illusion. Its author
instead reproduced the look of that familiar
structure by an entirely different creative pro-
cess. The point of departure was an imported,
commercially manufactured fine cotton plain
weave. That cloth was torn into fifteen strips
that were individually stitched with intricate
patterns and immersed in indigo dye. Once the
patterning of the individual units of fabric was
complete the strips were stitched together into
a single panel. In planning this composition and
ingenious undertaking, the artist has quoted
and transposed the widespread paradigm of
strip constructed design as a purely aesthetic
expression.
Rachid Korachi (b. 1947, Algerian)
Blue, a supraterrestrial color, is the path of the infinite. It expresses
detachment from the values of the world (Paris, 2008).
Born in Algeria, based in Paris, and traveling continually to
Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt, Rachid Korachis ambitious artistic
endeavors are catalysts for journeys of discovery. These pilgrim-
ages, punctuated by multimedia installations, retrace the paths
taken by venerated Sufi mystics. Trained at Algerias cole des
Beaux-Arts, the Institut dUrbanisme de lAcadmie de Paris,
and both the cole des Beaux-Arts and cole des Arts Dcoratifs
in Paris, Korachis identity is centered on his heritage of Sufism,
which informs his emphasis on the inseparability of aesthetics
and metaphysics. The process of both developing these demand-
ing meditations and experiencing them may be likened to the
tariqa or way of Sufi mysticism through which one strives to
perpetually deepen understanding in quest of grace.
Through making manifest the writings of exemplary mystics,
Korachi seeks to capture an idea of transcendence. He never liter-
ally transcribes sacred texts but rather expressively translates them
into his own personal script, which combines the written word in
Islamic calligraphy, characters that originate in pre-Islamic Ber-
ber and Tuareg tradition, magical squares, and talismanic num-
bers. Despite his focus on the power of esoteric signs, Korachis
works are invariably multi-faceted, combining different kinds of
media. These projects seek to highlight the cosmopolitan charac-
ter of the Mediterranean world going back to the medieval period
through reviving the legacy of specialized artisans. He executes
these in collaboration with individuals trained in a regions clas-
sical traditions, such as weavers and dyers who produce elements
of his monumental, often site-specific creations under his supervi-
sion. Korachis expansive vision reignites complex intercultural
networks, resides in major cultural institutions, and has been rec-
ognized in international exhibitions including both the 47th and
49th Venice Biennales.
11 Yinka Shonibare, MBE (b.
1962, British)
100 Years (2000)
Emulsion, acrylic on Dutch wax
printed cotton textile, painted
wood; 248.9cm x 850.9 cm
(98" x 335"); 100 panels each:
30cm x 30cm (11" x W. 11")
Lent by Ninah and Michael
Lynne, New York

This installation takes the form

of a monumental sampler of
one hundred panels of wax
prints, stretched as canvases,
that the artist purchased in Brix-
ton, South London, and which
Vlisco manufactured in Hel-
mond, Holland, for African
consumers. They all are altered
by painterly interventions that
obliterate their designs. The
visual intensity of this dense
tableau of contrasting patterns
and their underlying conceptual
order challenges the idea of the
grid in Modernism and invites
association with the expansive
scope, dynamism, and structure
of woven and patterned West
African textiles.

12 Rachid Korachi (b. 1947,

Algerian)
7 Variations on Indigo (2002)
Serigraphy on Aleppo silk, ink,
and paint; each banner: 320cm
x 48cm (126" x 18")
Collection of the artist

In these elements from a larger

installation, the artist fore-
grounds indigo, the ubiquitous
deep blue dye obtained from
various plants that has been
used in virtually every culture.
He underscores its importance
in trade networks between
the northern and sub-Saharan
regions of the continent and
the world at large.

spring 2009 african arts

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