Threading through the Collections at Wits Art Museum 2024

Posted on 30 March 202423 May 2024

Threading through the Collection at the Wits Art Museum showing until 11th May 2024

This not-to-be-missed exhibition currently on show at the Wits Art Museum in Braamfontein includes some of the 540 textile pieces in the Standard Bank African Art Collection at WAM, which have never before formed the sole focus of an exhibition. There are so many superlatives to use when talking about this exhibtion: the textiles themselves, the space, the curatorial eye, the accompanying educational pamphlet.

Wits Art Museum is the ideal space for these breath-taking fabrics as many of them are huge, up to 5 metres in length. The airy double volume main gallery gives breathing space to view these large-scale works and the blue walls behind the Kuba cloths is a stroke of genius, working beautifully to offset the rich earthy colours of the textiles.

**Kuba cloths** from DRC (formerly Zaire) are hung in the main WAM gallery. Usually worn wrapped around the body in ceremonial events, here they are hung vertically to preserve the fabric which is often doubled over to allow for the full length of the cloth, sometimes up to 5 metres. See below for the extraodinary detial of the cloth second from the left.

Detail of the Kuba cloth second from left above. It is the men’s role to cultivate the raffia palm and then weave the raffia. The women embroider the fabric usually with very intricate geometric patterns. Historians and mathematicians have researched the way in which geometric deisgns on **Ku ba textiles relate to mathematics as well as to music.** In the case of the latter, reference is made to the way in which the pattern is broken (ie there is not a mere repetition of musical or visual motifs).

The work and intricacy in weaving the raffia cloth is quite extraordinary. The leaves of the raffia palm have to stripped and dried. They are coloured with natural dyes and then woven on a loom to make the fabric. Traditionally, all this is men’s work.

Walkabout with curator Kutlwano Mokgojwa

But I digress .. I have leapt into detail in my enthusiasm for these beautiful objects. If you can, aim to join a walkabout with curator Kutlwano Mokgojwa. Kutlwano trained at the University of Pretoria and has worked at the Javett Art Centre in Pretoria as well as at the Norval Foundation in the Cape. Kutlwano’s discussion around the curatorial thinking behind this exhibition (her first curated exhibition at WAM), as well as her knowledge of textile techniques, making processes, and cultural usage, is fascinating. As I am completely ignorant about the techniques of handmade fabric-making, sewing, embroidery … in fact anything to do with a needle and thread, a loom and a peddle, warp and weft, it was all a lot for me to take in. But Kutlwano has a wonderful way of talking through her passion with a knowledge, accessibility and clarity which is extremely refreshing and engaging. Thanks Kutlwano.

Curatorial lay-out and themes

Much of the exhibition in the lower gallery level speaks about cloth and textile as an outward marker of status, rank, class, gender, kinship, age – the Zairian Kuba cloths, the Ghanaian Kente cloths and the Sahel Fulani fabrics are all used as outward markers in some way.

These khasa (blankets) made by the Fulani of the Sahel are traditionally made of handspun wool.

The painstaking detail and technicial geometrical precision of this stripweave fabric is awe-inspiring (detail of above 3rd from the left, a Fulani Khasaa from Mpoti in Central Mali). How the narrow stips with their complex colour arrangements are all conceptualized and then spun, defies belief.

From handmade to factory produced

Much like flags, factory-printed cloths are used as powerful markers of and allegiances to a political party, person or ideology or to commemorate historic events. When Ghana became the first African country to gain independence in 1957, the image of Kwame Nkrumah’s face printed on cloths began a tradition of commemorative cloths in Africa.

Materials and techniques

There is a careful curatorial exploration of a wide variety of materials: raffia, cotton, bark, wool, beads, mud dyes, vegetable dyes. And my stumbling block … the many different techniques & making processes: weaving, embroidery, applique, stitching.

In the reception area there are cabinets with examples of looms and heddle pulleys as well as Adinkra stamps. Unfortunately these are difficult to photograph as the glass cabinets reveal a background of cars and people in Jorissen street … not conducive to a clear photograph of weaving on the loom. So I have relied on the explanatory drawing from the educational pamphlet.

This drawing is taken from the excellent education resource accompanying the exhibition (page 4), written by Bougaard, Alison Kearney and Kutlwano Mokgojwa, edited by Julia Charlton with Fiona Rankin-Smith as a research assistant. The width of the loom determines the size of the cloth that can be woven resulting in stripweave where thin strips of cloth are sewn together to produce the finished fabric as with the Fulani and Kente cloths.

Alongside the looms in the glass cabinets are examples of 5 heddle pulleys as above: **Senufo**, and **Baule/Guro**, (from Burkino Faso, Cȏte d’Ivoire and Mali). The two objects in the front are Adinkra stamps used by the **Asante people of Ghana**. Symbols referred to in Asante proverbs are carved into the stamps (made from calabashes) which are then used to stamp the fabric known as **Adinkra cloth**.

Embroidery

No African textile exhibition would be complete without our South African embroidery collectives: Mapula in the Winterveld and the a beaded Nceka from Limpopo.

Selina Makwana from the Mapula Collective. March 2020. This was the time of Corona, Covid and the beginning of the several lockdowns

The formation of the ANC. A beaded and embroidered Nceka by Venus Makhubele.

The Upper Gallery

Several differeing themes are introduced in the Upstairs Gallery

The upper gallery includes a variety of textiles which speak of different themes: clothing and new synthetic textiles; cultural cross-overs; traditional designs and patterns used in contemporary designer fashion labels such as Maxhosa Africa; the influence of technology and computing references with its language of pattern, repetition and mathematics.

Kutlwano Mokgojwa talks about the fabrics in the upper gallery. Here a colonial style smock meets African design and colours

There is the most exquisite translation (I did warn of excessive use of superlatives) of a Walter Battiss watercolour into a magnificent tapestry by the Marguerite Stephens Tapestry Studio.

Estwatini (Swazi) Stephens Tapestry studio meets Battiss’ *Magic Spirit Birds* 2016

Spot the difference between Battiss’ small-scale watercolour (out of one of his sketchbooks) and the large scale 2m X 3m mohair tapestry Magic Spirit Birds 2016. How is it possible to capture these senstive pale watercolour ‘washes’ of pink in the woven textile? The words that accompany Battiss’ watercolour have been included in the woven border around the image in the tapestry.

Education resource

And as if all these aesthetic and technical wonders were not enought, we were all given a copy of the workbook produced for the exhibition. What a privilege to have all this on our doorstep.

Guests at Liz at Lancaster made a special effort to get there and were blown away by this exhibition. DO NOT MISS IT.

Phone WAM on 011 717-1358 to find out when the next walkabout is.