West African textiles, Manchester, UK
Jul. 1st, 2012 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labricoleuseI'm abroad in the UK for the next month for research, scholarship, and fun, and I'm taking the opportunity to check out lots of museums and galleries while I'm at it. Anything relevant I'll share here, and more general travel journaling is happening in my travel blog.
Last week I visited some friends in Manchester, where I also got to see some of We Face Forward, a citywide exhibition of West African art, culture, and and artifacts spanning the collections and spaces of museums, galleries, libraries, and music venues across the city. I didn't have nearly the time to see it all, but did get to the textile art shown at the Whitworth Art Gallery.
I found the most compelling work to be in the first hall, in which were hung historical and contemporary fabrics and garments of West African origin. Though they were displayed in no discernable sequence, the pieces themselves were fascinating in their artisanship from a design perspective.
Egregiously, though, the attached text barely addressed how the pieces had been made and by whom or placed them in any West African cultural context. Instead, the blurbs focused largely on who had donated them to the museum. Instead of telling viewers about the culture from which the piece came, how and why it was made and used and worn, we learned about a bunch of imperial/colonial white dudes and their families. The blurb would perhaps then say something about the work being indigo dyed with wax resist, with no explanation of what indigo dyeing entailed or what a wax resist process is--my friend who attended the exhibit with me and who is not familiar with textile artistry techniques found the descriptions useless, and we both found them culturally offensive.
Dutch wax prints with fantastic patterns. This Slate article
imparts the kind of info about these textiles I'd hoped to read in the exhibit.
Indigo textile designs. At rear, freehand wax resist design.
Front two pieces, stitch-resist designs after a shibori-esque fashion.
This dealer page explains a bit about the processes, more than the exhibit did.
In short, I appreciated seeing the work on display but did not come away knowing any more about any of it than I already knew or could conjecture based on a general knowledge of surface design processes.
Coming up soon, a peek into the workshop at Manchester's renowned bespoke millinery boutique, h'atelier!
Last week I visited some friends in Manchester, where I also got to see some of We Face Forward, a citywide exhibition of West African art, culture, and and artifacts spanning the collections and spaces of museums, galleries, libraries, and music venues across the city. I didn't have nearly the time to see it all, but did get to the textile art shown at the Whitworth Art Gallery.
I found the most compelling work to be in the first hall, in which were hung historical and contemporary fabrics and garments of West African origin. Though they were displayed in no discernable sequence, the pieces themselves were fascinating in their artisanship from a design perspective.
Egregiously, though, the attached text barely addressed how the pieces had been made and by whom or placed them in any West African cultural context. Instead, the blurbs focused largely on who had donated them to the museum. Instead of telling viewers about the culture from which the piece came, how and why it was made and used and worn, we learned about a bunch of imperial/colonial white dudes and their families. The blurb would perhaps then say something about the work being indigo dyed with wax resist, with no explanation of what indigo dyeing entailed or what a wax resist process is--my friend who attended the exhibit with me and who is not familiar with textile artistry techniques found the descriptions useless, and we both found them culturally offensive.
Dutch wax prints with fantastic patterns. This Slate article
imparts the kind of info about these textiles I'd hoped to read in the exhibit.
Indigo textile designs. At rear, freehand wax resist design.
Front two pieces, stitch-resist designs after a shibori-esque fashion.
This dealer page explains a bit about the processes, more than the exhibit did.
In short, I appreciated seeing the work on display but did not come away knowing any more about any of it than I already knew or could conjecture based on a general knowledge of surface design processes.
Coming up soon, a peek into the workshop at Manchester's renowned bespoke millinery boutique, h'atelier!
