Culture: The head scarf

Culture: The head scarf
APRIL 12, 2014 EBELANDI6 COMMENTS


Most people believe all African women wear headscarves. In fact, I remember a girl looking down on me because I said I did not wear it. It was a funny moment and I tried hard not to laugh but there I was being taught how to dress African by a girl who had only heard of Africa from books and the few friends she knew. However, the fact is she did not know so how could I get upset? Maybe she genuinely felt compelled to help me appreciate what she believed to be a quintessential part of grooming in my culture.



And in some African countries, the headscarf is indeed a staple in women’s clothing. However, Africa is a very diverse continent, not all of its inhabitants share the same traditions or preferences. In fact, even the city in which I was born has very distinct grooming rules based on the tribe one is from, and the personal choices one makes.

Fractals and Indigenous Textiles

\//// Textiles and Digital Spaces \//// /////////////////////////////
//////////Sharing some explorations between textiles and digital mediums//////////
« Generated knitted patterns
https://xxxclairewilliamsxxx.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/fractals-and-indigenous-textiles/






The idea of constructing a pattern or textile structure using recursion as a rule is something that can be seen in traditional textiles throughout the world. Theorized by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1974, fractals are a geometric object infinitely fragmented where the details can be observed at any random scale. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems. Fractals and recursion can be observed in nature as in trees, rivers, coastlines, mountains, clouds, seashells, hurricanes, etc.Fractals are widely used in biology, economy and computer science using iterative algorithms executed by computers.

African Fractals





We can find fractals in African crafts and architecture. They reflect a spiritual relationship between the living and the ancestors in some of the African culture. In opposite to an euclidean way of constructing a structure or pattern, African fractals appear to have indeed a mythical meaning through iterative construction. In weaving, pleating or folding and stitch dying resist for example, this could also be related to the textile technique being used which naturally influences the way you construct a pattern inside a textile grid specific to the chosen technique.

Faustin Linyekula

 

For Americans in the 21^st Century, the concept of “punk” is unbelievably stale, but in some other parts of the world, not perverted by the whole “suburban mall punk” culture, that word still signifies promise and vitality. Late 1970s punk is what inspired Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula to create his new piece More, more, more… future, which was first shown in San Francisco on September 29^th at the YBCA. Linyekula and his team, including the prominent guitarist Flamme Kapaya, attempted to combine punk’s scorched-earth approach and political urgency with the culture of ndombolo, based around a very sensual and hedonistic Congolese pop music style.
One of the things that true punk is supposed to do is subvert the canons of performance, and this is what More, more, more… future started with. The band, with Flamme Kapaya and the lanky vocalist Pasnas dressed in eye-melting glittery outfits, came out on stage when the lights were still on and the audience members were still bickering over seats (a decidedly un-spectacular beginning, especially for a spectacle as exuberant as what Linyekula’s piece proved to be!). The musicians patiently waited for everyone to sit down and shut up, and Pasnas’s grave stare reminded us that, in spite of all the glitter, it was serious business that they were dealing with. The songs written for More, more, more… future are based on poems by Antoine Vumilia Muhindo, Linyekula’s childhood friend who was imprisoned for political motives and sentenced to death, but escaped and now lives in hiding. The narrative unfurled to his powerful words of disobedience and discontent, delivered with ferocity by Pasnas and the other vocalist, Le Coq.
The grievances of his home country and Africa in general are of course the central concerns of Linyekula’s piece, but I prefer to view it in a more “universal” framework, as a story about how people and cultures progress from naiveté to a depraved state, with hope for regeneration at the end. The three dancers, Linyekula himself as well as Papy Ebotani and Dinozord, appeared when the audience was finally silent, and their movements and gestures seemed to refer more to the poses of Matisse’s bathers than to any psychological state known to man. Soon enough they put on their unforgettable costumes (by Malian designer Xuly Bët), cabbage-like soft sculptures seemingly fashioned out of discarded clothing. My husband later said that they made him recall the expression “dead man’s clothes,” which he heard on a trip to Niger. When used clothes donated by Westerners get shipped to Africa, the people there just cannot believe that the original owners of the rags are still alive. In Africa, with poverty rampant, you part with your clothes only when you’re dead. The costumes also looked like ruffled spheres; my friend Lucia suggested that they might refer to colonial-era dresses. Both points of view prompted the guess that the costumes signify complete cultural dependence. Moreover, they make a person look like an object. When the band finally crashed on us with its fierce Afro-funk, the dancers made sure that their movements spoke of abandonment–total subjection to the music. A particularly eloquent moment was when one of the dancers was bouncing up and down in his costume, which created an impression that the whole body was violently vibrating. That “chapter” of the performance cast the dancers as naïve, childlike, dependent beings that have not developed a personality yet.
http://www.kabako.org/
http://timeoutchicago.com/arts-culture/dance/14986947/interview-faustin-linyekula

El Anatsui - wall art

El Anatsui. He is a Ghanian sculptor and professor who works with recycled materials. His pieces are gigantic textile-like sculptures made of found objects wired-together. Metal strips from the necks and tops of liquor bottles that were to be recycled, it is huge, richly textured, and sensuous - all belying the fact that it is made of rigid, unwanted materials. Yet another example of how anything looks good in great numbers. The rich metallic color brings to mind Ghana's famous goldsmith traditions, and its composition of strips gives a nod to the strip-woven cloth of Ghana, called 'kente'.

grace ndiritu

 

Grace Ndiritu: Racial stereotyping and cultural difference between east and west is explored in Ndiritu's installation The Nightingale. Wrapping a piece of fabric around her head, Ndiritu changes her identity through a series of movements as the headgear is transformed from veil to bandanna, gag to turban, from blindfold to burka.

http://eastsideprojects.org/ongoing/curtain-show/

Grace Ndiritu, Still Life: Green Textiles, Sitting Textiles, White Textiles, Lying Down Textiles 2007

http://www.lux.org.uk/screening-room/grace-ndiritus-week-news-7-places-we-think-we-know-7-news-stories-we-think-we-underst

Eastside Projects presents an artist’s talk with Grace Ndiritu (b. 1976 Birmingham, UK, lives and works in London). Ndiritu’s practice combines advertising, documentary and music video strategies within the framework of performance video art, and her work is currently exhibited as part of Curtain Show at Eastside Projects: Still Life, 2007, is set in a large curtained area formed from West African fabrics from Holland, fabricated in China and available in Birmingham’s rag market. Ndiritu’s series of four videos use West African textiles in a sensual and, at times, unnerving physical performance by the artist to the camera.
Previous solo exhibitions include Still Life and Responsible Tourism, Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2007, and the 51st Venice Biennale, 2005. Recent group shows include Dress Codes, International Center of Photography, New York, 2009; Flow, Studio Museum Harlem, New York, 2008; Dakar Biennale, Senegal, 2008. Her work is housed in private collections in the USA and Europe and museums collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Her films are distributed by LUX.

Seydou Keïta

Seydou Keïta (1921 - 2001) was one of the most celebrated West African photographers. Born in 1921, Bamako, Mali, Seydou Keïta’s photographs eloquently portray Bamako society during its era of transition from a cosmopolitan French colony to an independent capital. Initially trained by his father to be a carpenter, Keïta’s career as a photographer was launched in 1935 by an uncle who gave him his first camera, a Kodak Brownie Flash, which he had purchased during a trip to Senegal. During his adolescence Keïta mastered the technical challenges of shooting and printing; he later purchased a large-format camera. The larger format not only offered an exceptional degree of resolution, it also made it possible for Keïta to make high quality contact prints without the aid of an enlarger. In 1948 he opened his own studio in Bamako and he quickly built up a successful business.
Whether photographing single individuals, families, or professional associations, Keïta balanced a strict sense of formality with a remarkable level of intimacy with his subjects. Like many professional photographers, he furnished his studio with numerous props, from backdrops and costumes, to Vespas and luxury cars. He would renew these props every few years, which later allowed him to establish a chronology for his work. Keïta commented on his studio practice, “It’s easy to take a photo, but what really made a difference was that I always knew how to find the right position, and I was never wrong. Their head slightly turned, a serious face, the position of the hands . . . I was capable of making someone look really good.”

Images of Power: African Presidents on Printed Fabrics

"Fancy print" textiles produced in Europe for the markets of colonial Africa emerged in the 1920s as a cheaper substitute for so-called "Dutch wax" resin-resist prints. Although they were of lower quality and the design was only on one face, they had one distinct advantage which soon opened up a new range of decorative possibilities and hence a novel social role. Unlike wax prints, the technology of fancy prints allowed for the reproduction of photographic imagery. Very quickly the technique was adopted to produce what have become known as commemorative cloths. At first these were for funerary uses, hardly surprising given the importance of funerary ceremonies in the Gold Coast (present day Ghana), where a 1928 sample in the archives of the United Africa Company shows a woman, presumably a wealthy market trader, named only as "Mammy," while another from 1931 showed a then deceased Ewe chief. However there is also a cloth believed to date to the 1930s that shows Kojo Thompson, a prominent campaigner for independence (Picton 2001:161.) Other cloths commemorated specific events such as a visit to the Gold Coast by the Prince of Wales. 

In many parts of Africa there is a long tradition of leaders, chiefs and "big" men and women distributing cloth to their followers. The new leaders of independent Africa in the 1960s were quick to adopt the medium of fancy printed cloths to promote themselves within the expectations framed by these traditions. Cloths were printed at government expense and distributed free or at subsidised prices via market women either to promote specific events, political campaigns, or as part of a more general policy of self-promotion. Wearing such a cloth was often advisable as an outwardly visible expression of allegiance to the ruling powers whatever the wearer's actual sentiments. 

The cloths displayed here are part of a private collection focused on Francophone African countries. No doubt interesting parallels and differences could be found in a comparative study of commemorative cloths from other areas of Africa.  The collector, M. Bernard Collet would like to hear from others who share his interest in these remarkable textiles