The Essential Art of African
Textiles: Design Without End at the Metropolitan in New York
September 30, 2008–March 22, 2009
 Man's
Protective Tunic
Nigeria; Hausa peoples, late 19th century
Cotton, leather, paper, pigment; 35 7/8 x 34 5/8 in. (91 x 88 cm)
The British Museum, London (Af1940,23.1)
Provenance: Acquired from Captain Alfred Walter Francis Fuller, 1940
Every inch of this simple
cotton tunic was inscribed and invested with prayers by an itinerant Hausa
artist who sought to transform it into a mantle of invulnerability. The Islamic
belief in the power of the Koran's written word is reflected in elaboration by a
draftsman gifted in deploying it eloquently as a visual form of expression. The
texts were not intended to be read for their content but rather to be
experienced aesthetically as an assault on the senses produced by their sheer
cumulative effect. The extraordinary measures taken to load the surface visually
with protective script suggest that the garment was made for an important
warrior to wear as a form of mystical body armor into battle.
 official
textile page
September 30, 2008–March 22, 2009
Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas—The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, 1st
floor
Book:
The
Essential Art of African Textile
The
Metropolitan Museum of Arts (official page for the African Art dept.)
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10028-0198
General Information: 212-535-7710
TTY: 212-570-3828 or 212-650-2551
NEW YORK, NY.- Africa's extraordinary legacy of textile arts, with its
explosive color and complex graphic statements, will be presented at The
Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning September 30. Bringing together more than
40 works dating from the early 19th century to the present – including a
spectacular silk and cotton kente prestige cloth woven in Ghana during the 19th
century and a 30-foot-long installation work by contemporary artist Yinka
Shonibare – The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design Without End will
highlight the enduring significance of textiles as a major form of aesthetic
expression across the continent. While examining some of the finest and earliest
preserved examples of different regional textile traditions, the exhibition will
relate these to works by eight contemporary artists, who draw inspiration from
textiles in their explorations of other media ranging from sculpture, painting,
and photography to video and installation art. Works selected for the exhibition
are drawn primarily from the collections of the Metropolitan and the British
Museum as well as several private collections in the U.S. and Europe.
"Although the aesthetics of textiles essentially define Africa's cultural
landscape, Western fine arts hierarchies have virtually overlooked textiles as
an art form and have favored sculpture from the region. We are seizing this
opportunity to heighten awareness of this critical dimension of Africa's
artistic legacy," said Alisa LaGamma, Curator in the Department of the Arts
of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. "In January the artist El Anatsui
installed his eloquent and highly original creation Between Earth and Heaven
that is now one of the highlights of our permanent collection. This fall we will
be able to present that 21st-century work in conversation with one of the
monumental textile genres that he pays tribute to through his new idiom of
expression," she continued.
Dazzling textile traditions figured importantly in the earliest recorded
accounts of visitors to sub-Saharan Africa, dating to as early as the ninth
century. Historically textiles also constituted one of the primary commodities
imported into sub-Saharan Africa, through trade routes that extended south
across the Sahara from North Africa until the 15th century and subsequently by
Europeans along the Gold Coast. Among the earliest documented examples of West
African textile traditions were those collected by European textile
manufacturers seeking new markets for their own exports in the 19th century. A
significant collection given to the British Museum in 1934 consisted of the
African textiles gathered in West Africa before 1913 by Charles Beving, who was
a partner of a Manchester firm. More than a dozen of these works, which were
gathered as part of market research to determine regional tastes, figure
centrally in this exhibition.
The myriad distinctive regional traditions represented include the expansive
monumental wool and cotton strip-woven architectural elements created in Mali
and Niger; a rich range of deep blue indigo, resist-dyed textile genres produced
in Senegal, Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon; textile panels composed and
woven by Igbo women and Yoruba men in Nigeria, to be wrapped around the body as
apparel; and a series of the impressive voluminous robes and tunics that have
been designed from regional fabrics from Algeria to Nigeria. The techniques used
to create these works will be examined along with the various cultural aesthetic
criteria they embrace. Across this diverse corpus of works, certain overarching
technical and formal approaches as well as aesthetic affinities will be
explored.
Contemporary Textiles Works on View
El Anatsui (Ghanaian, b.1944)
Between Earth and Heaven, 2006
Aluminum, copper wire; 86 3/4 in. x 10 ft. 6 in. (220.3 x 320 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Fred M. and Rita Richman, Noah-Sadie K. Wachtel Foundation Inc., David and Holly Ross, Doreen and Gilbert Bassin Family Foundation and William B. Goldstein Gifts, 2007 (2007.96)
These various examples of regional vernaculars on display will provide a
foundation and points of departure for consideration of 16 works by contemporary
artists who are conversant with this highly sophisticated visual language.
Ghanaian kente will appear in relation not only to Anatsui's "metal
tapestry," but also to the abstract works on paper by Atta Kwami (b. 1956,
Ghana). The bold graphic patterns of Malian woven and industrially manufactured
"wax prints" are central focal points of the black-and-white
photographic portraits produced in the Bamako studios of Seydou Keita (b. 1921?
– d. 2001, Mali) and Malick Sidibé (b. 1936, Mali).
The longstanding interconnections between North and Western Africa are
considered through a spectacular, densely inscribed Islamic protective tunic
created by a Hausa artist from Nigeria during the 19th century and a series of
the indigo dyed silk banners filled with the poetic textual prayers of a Sufi
mystic from the installation work 7 Variations on Indigo by Rachid Koraïchi (b.
1947, Algeria).
The transformative potential of textiles and the process whereby individuals
selectively enhance and shape their identity through cloth defines the use of
the classical textile genres featured and is addressed in both the imagery of
the life-size figurative steel sculpture Nigerian Woman Shopping by Sokari
Douglas Camp (b. 1958, Nigeria) and The Nightingale, a video by Grace Ndiritu
(b. 1976, UK). Finally, the mural 100 Years by Yinka Shonibare (b. 1962, UK)
considers the synergy between African textile design and that imported from
outside, and how those distinctions have blurred and become
unrecognizable.
This unique conversation between "contemporary" and
"classical" forms of expression will establish the continuity between
their aesthetics and enhance an appreciation of their content.
This exhibition illustrates the stunningly diverse classical textile genres created by artists in West Africa through some of their earliest documented and finest works. Highlights of the Metropolitan’s own holdings will be presented along with some twenty works that entered The British Museum’s collection by the early twentieth century. Selected works will represent inventive variations on major themes of the influential classical genres. The exhibition will relate these genres to contemporary art forms by affording an appreciation of the cultural context and visual language of these traditions and exploring their synergy and resonance in works by eight living artists.
The publication The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design Without End produced by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press will accompany this exhibition.
The exhibition is made possible in part by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Fred and Rita Richman, and The Ceil & Michael E. Pulitzer Foundation, Inc.
It was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in collaboration with the British Museum, London.
To buy the book:
for more articles about the Metropolitan visit: http://users.telenet.be/african-shop/metropolitan.htm
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