Go to any cultural event or academic gathering in Johannesburg (or Capetown) and wider afield internationally, and there will almost certainly be an array of Marigold bead wearers. Marigold wearers will “ooh and aah” with each other in jocular envy and exuberant admiration. Spun on a loom with beads and thread, worn on moving bodies, and seductive to the eye with glorious patterns and colour combinations, these necklaces encourage tactile feel and touch. They are an immediate point of connection. I have had passing comments from complete strangers who will comment: “Love your Marigolds!” When Marigold first started over a decade ago, most necklaces were composed in single colours or quite simple patterns of different ‘slabs of colour’ with huge variants in colour and tone depending on the falling light and the colour of the thread used to weave.
Over the years, the designs have developed in complexity and subtley.
And new collaborations have taken the project in different directions with increasing Special Project designs so it is to these I now turn.
Special Projects
These Special Project necklaces are led by Joni Brenner who is the link between the Marigold collective and the artists/scientists/researchers involved in the collaborations. Perhaps the first Special Project was with renowned fashion designer Marianne Fassler when, at the 2014 Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, Fassler adorned her models on the catwalk with an array of Marigold beads. The ‘Serge’ design was made in response to the work Burundian artist Serge-Alain Nitegeka who was featured at the 2016 Joohannesburg Art Fair. In 2023, Joni and Marigold, turned to a collaboration of a different sort, working with researchers Isabel Hofmeyr and Charne Lavery, directors of the project ‘Oceanic Humanities for the Global South’ (OHGS). They posed the question, ‘Can necklaces be made to represent the ocean?’. See the MarigoldBead website for these ‘watery’ marvels as well as for the academic article exploring the ‘oceanic spirit” of these beads.
Genome Beadwork: a collaboration between art, craft and science
And then to a ground-breaking scientific project. Brenner’s husband Scott Hazelhurst, is Professor of Bioinformatics at the School of Electrical & Information Engineering at Wits, as well as being a Senior Scientist at the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (also Wits) where he is part of the H3 Africa Consortium. Basically, he is a very clever man. One of the primary projects of this consortium has been to research the very undeveloped field of genetic diversity in Africa. Their ground-breaking study, helping to inform health and migration issues, presents “whole-genome sequence analyses” (Kelly Krause) of 426 individuals across 50 ethnolinguistic groups. Krause explains how Joni noticed her husband, Scott, working with genomic data in the form of admixture plots …. And so “the idea to translate the [admixture] structure plot to beadwork emerged from my admiration of the stunning patterns of their research graphs, maps and plots that I kept seeing on his screen!”
From admixture plot to beaded adornment
And this was how the genomic data charts got interpreted in the beadwork.
Work on this Marigold project began in 2017 and when the scientific study was published in the highly prestigious international scientific journal Nature in October 2020, the cover illustration for this article was a photograph of the necklaces. What an accolade for the Marigold collective.
The genome project revisited
At the end of last year Marigold held a pop-up shop at 54 Valley Rd. More genome project necklaces were for sale. This new collaboration with the SBIMB [Sydney Brenner Institute of Molecular Bioscience] used updated data and marked the ten year anniversary of the SBIMB. Oh the choice, the choice. And I could NOT resist (See below).
OTHER intersections and with science and technology: Bell Curve and Voice messages
After the 2017 enagagement with screens, technology and science in the genome project, Marigold beads developed two new designs in response to the Covid-19 pandemic: ‘Bell Curves’ and ‘Voice Messages’. My Voice Message inspired necklace below left.
‘Bell Curves’ are based on the many data graphs and charts keeping a tally on the evidence, tracking infection rates, recovery rates, effects of age, co-morbidities and almost every aspect of life. ….. The ‘Voice Messages’ are based on the sound wave representations of voice recordings, but they also evoke heart rates, both of which are signs of life and response, antidotes to isolation.
Collaboration with Kentridge
Kentridge’s exhibition Why Should I Hesitate: Sculpture opened at Norval in Capetown in August 2019 and Joni and the Marigold collective, created a set of 5 new designs which were to mark the start of an ongoing relationship between Kentridge’s visual language and select Marigold designs. These Norval Foundation necklaces mark a new direction with the introduction of text into the beading patterns. Three years later, when Kentridge exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, 5 further new Marigold designs which spoke loosely to Kentridge’s visual language of works on show, were commissioned for display in the gift shop. These 5 designs are: Felix; Sybil; Notes from a Model Opera; Breathe; and Geometries of Colour.
Two further designs (with the beaded responses) are represented on the Marigold cards below:
Entry to the canon of collectibles
Apart fromt the technical skill, labour and time that the beaders need to make these necklaces, within each design produced by Marigold, every necklace is unique. As an artist by profession , Joni has an extraordinary feel for the aesthetic, for detail, for presentation. At her home (which can be visited by appointment only) she has custom-made drawers for the necklaces which slide out effortlessly to reveal the most breathtaking array of colours and sheens – each drawer a work of art in itself. Because the production is small and slow, the necklaces are available through very few outlets – ony SAD stores in CapeTown and select other international outlets. So keep an eye out for her pop-up events which Joni curates with meticulous detail.
As an art historian, Joni has recorded and documented all the necklaces (as seen in the chronology chart of early necklaces at the beginning of this post), so there is a clear record of the development in the beadwork, the equivalent of an art historical Catalogue Raisonné. The necklaces have been exhibited in the context of the “hallowed halls of ‘Fine Art’ ” – from the Johannesburg Norval Foundation, to the Johannesburg Art Fair, to the Royal Academy of Arts in London. All this, along with a book and academic articles written about these necklaces, has established them as collectible items of adornment, each bead a miniature jewel, each necklace a miniature artwork. And finally as a teacher, Joni often produces “information cards” (as in the Kentridge collaborations discussed above), explaining the context and significance of the creative inspiration and responses in many of the Special Project necklaces. Apart from clarifying and expanding on buyers’ understanding of the significance of their necklaces, the cards also acknowledge the value of the collaborative process.
It is no wonder these necklaces have gained widespread local and international recognition. Will there be more Marigold creations featured on future editions of Nature?