Tag: textiles

A Womxn’s Dis-ease // reframing ‘disease’ and unpicking the frameworks of cis-heteropatriarchy

Walking into the side entrance of The Point of Order (TPO) I am greeted by varying colours of fabric cutoffs stitched together. Camouflaged between these, are the words ‘DREAMS THAT MY BOdY’ – an impactful introduction to the Masters exhibition by Chloë Hugo-Hamman titled A Womxn’s Dis-ease.

Walking between her works that are installed on either side of the exhibition space, I move excitedly to where she has set up camp on the other end of TPO. Sitting on a beanbag, surrounded by textiles of all colours and textures, Chloë greets me, a small stitching project in hand. “That looks like so much fun,” I comment. “Yes. It’s like a kind of meditation,” she replies. This opening fittingly welcomes my first question about fabric as her medium of choice.

“I am very interested in textile. I love colour and texture,” Chloë explains. Soft, cosy fabrics appeal to Chloë’s eye, with these present throughout all the work that make up the show. Her specific hand stitching technique allows for her to work with the irregularity of the fabric, creating volumes that play on the textures of the reused fabrics. Her stitching, when viewed closely, also resembles veins, making a connection to the importance of depathologising bodies and ways of navigating the world. Letters are cut out of old t-shirts, and these are used to make up the words accompanying the visual pleasure of shades of red, pink, purple, yellow and blue that have been threaded together. This brings to the fore the interrogation of language within this exhibition.

“I made the words first. I was thinking about which words I want[ed] to incorporate into this exhibition.” Once these were created, Chloë was able to decide which words would be placed together, forming juxtapositions and dynamisms, and asking viewers to think about the tension that these groupings of words hold.

‘cHrONic SUPPOrT CaRe’ is once such grouping. This speaks to the lack of support and care in the world for what it means to have a chronic illness, and the need for that care and support structure.

“Chronic means that you will have it all your life, and unless you can afford the care – and even if you can afford it – it’s not really available in the way you need it. What I mean is that even if you have the means to access medical care, that care is prescribed by a largely Western medical framework, which is very much about responding only to the display of specific symptoms. If you don’t display the symptom, you won’t get diagnosed. And then there is the whole thing of language, because if you can’t articulate what your experience is using specific words, then you also can’t get diagnosed. But a Western medical diagnosis is also generally lacking, in that it is very seldom holistic in its approach to understanding the physical and psychic body. Then, as a womxn, it impacts further because of the patriarchal structure of [Western] medicine. A lot of the time you are dealing with doctors who are men, and their experience of the world is different to yours as a womxn. Their experience of violence and pain (and of how these can be projected and/or enacted onto a womxn’s body) is different, and often, as a womxn, you aren’t really heard or taken seriously. Your agency is compromised or negated. I am not implying that men do not experience mental illness or systemic violence, nor am I implying a stable categorisation or binary of gender as man and woman. Rather, I am pointing to the violence and therefore the pain implicit in a womxn’s patriarchal gendering. Which is also why I, like many other feminists, choose the convention of writing womxn with an ‘x’ as a strategy of disentangling ‘woman’ or ‘women’ from the subject-position of ‘man’ or ‘men’, and to consciously destabilise all rigid, violent and exclusionary gender categoristions.”

Following this train of thought is the idea of establishing alternative communities of care or “new forms of sociality”, a point Chloë takes from Ann Cvetkovich (2012), who is a seminal referent in her Masters. This asks the question, how can we create spaces and methods of care that are genuine, and provide a sense of safety, relief and understanding?

Continuing with the interrogation of language and the Western patriarchal biomedical framework for wellness and disease, is the work, ‘Sponsored by’. Taken from old t-shirts produced for corporate funded charitable activities, clusters of the words ‘sponsorship’ and ‘sponsored by’ are stitched together. In our discussion, Chloë comments on how most of these t-shirts were pointing to sponsorship for events related to breast cancer, with pale pink being the colour that is used to visually represent this. She points out the irony of these t-shirts, as the companies that sponsor these events sometimes have products or engage in practices that are carcinogenic. “And that was interesting for me in how it brings together a lot of my interests: big pharma, Western medical-industrial complex, symptom, labels, gender and feminism. Breast cancer is symptomatic for womxn, but it’s also so symptomatic of this capitalist system we live in. And also the fact that these t-shirts just have to be this baby pink! …it’s a kind of pink-washing!”

As briefly mentioned earlier, deconstructing processes of labelling in the way in which language is embedded within patriarchal structures of power presents strongly in the show. In the exhibition’s title the word ‘disease’ is re-framed as ‘dis-ease’. This is an empowering reworking of the English language, and draws attention away from the idea of the individual as the problem. It instead makes a larger commentary on the way in which the world operates. “It is less about ‘I am diseased’, more of ‘I have a dis-ease in the world’. The world that we live in is very fucked up, and you are meant to be or look or act a certain way; and if you aren’t that way you feel a dis-ease.” This ‘dis-ease’ can manifest in various ways, and Chloë’s focus is around mental illness.

A Womxn’s Dis-ease stitches fabric together to unpick neoliberal, white supremacist, imperial-capitalist, cis-heteropatriarchy.

To keep up with Chloë’s practice follow her on Instagram.

20 July 2018
Artist Wanja Kimani’s interrogations of private and public power

Kenyan-born artist Wanja Kimani has a visual practice that strings together stories and visual histories which comment on the idea of home, displacement, trauma, memories and imaginations.

While imposing elements of her own life in public spaces, she occupies the positions of both narrator and character. This is evident in the various media she uses to construct her work, including installation, performances, text, film, textiles and sound.

One of her recent works Expectations, a collaboration with Annabel McCourt, is a performance that was presented at Dak’Art 2018 – Biennale of Contemporary African Art. It was performed in response to Annabel McCourt’s Electric Fence. The work dives into the complexities surrounding borders, immigration, race, as well as private and public power, and how these forms of power are constructed. These larger themes are interwoven with explorations of mortality as well as personal and physical boundaries.

In the video of the performance online, the first few seconds create the impression of eyes opening after a long sleep, with shots of lights hanging from the ceiling and wire fencing coming in and out of focus. The voice of the narrator recalls memories from a childhood, presumably the childhood of the character (played by Kimani) that appears on screen. As the narrator goes on to explain how walls will come separate the children mentioned in the recollection of memories, the viewer sees Kimani maneuvering between wire fences and throwing rocks and bricks on top of each other, as if intending to build a wall or to examine what remains of the structure these bricks once constituted.

The poetic narration speaks of silencing, leaving home, crossing borders, and the traumas that accompany this. The interaction between the words and what the viewer sees create a heaviness, the relevance of which becomes apparent as the story of Charles Wootton is told. The narrator shares how Wootton has died as a result of a racially motivated crime in Liverpool in 1919. He was thrown into the water at Kings Dock, and as he swam, trying to lift himself out of the water, he was pelted by bricks until he sank. Kimani writes his name on a blackboard during the performance. She then goes on to write down the names of many other victims of hate crimes. In this way the victims are mourned and celebrated at the same time.

21 June 2018
The use of fabric in art for preservation, reflection and identity

Throughout the history of art, artists have appreciated the versatility that fabric possesses. Viewed as clothing, skin and a source of identity, it can be manipulated and molded into an object (or subject) with conceptual depth. It allows for the creation of soft sculptures, or be used as aids in performance, but does not deny artists the ability to project a sense of hardness, scale or visual weight. Textiles can also be used as a presentation of and reflection on colonialism and global trade, as with the work of UK-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare with his investigations of political and social histories. Fabric also offers a way to think about personal histories, as with the case of Accra-based artist Serge Attukwei Clottey‘s work My Mother’s Wardrobe.

‘My Mother’s Wardrobe’ by Serge Attukwei Clottey

Clottey’s work generally examines the power of everyday objects. However, the above mentioned work is potent in the way that it gives an avenue for thinking about the use and signification that fabric offers artists and viewers. Through this work he explored the connection that fabric can create between mothers and their children. In this work he used performance as a way to interrogate gender roles along with notions of family, ancestry and spirituality. This was a personal work inspired by the death of his mother, and the performance unpacked the concept of materiality with the intention of honouring women as the collectors and custodians of cloth that serve as signifiers of history and memory. Clottey presents a vulnerability in the way that he brings across his own experiences, while inviting viewers to think about their own personal connections to his subject matter.

While is broader practice involves photography, installation, sculpture and performance, this work highlights the significance of fabric when thinking about personal and collective cultures, histories and intimacies.

Artwork by Turiya Magadlela

Johannesburg-based artists Turiya Magadlela uses fabric as her primary medium, cutting, stitching and stretching it over wooden frames. Her use of commonly found fabrics, such as pantyhose and uniforms brings the past life of the fabric into the exhibition space, where it’s very presence creates animated associations in the minds of viewers. Her use of familiar fabrics allows her work to oscillate between abstract art and a collection of memories interwoven with articulations of experiences of womanhood, motherhood and narratives from Black South African history.

Looking at the work of Clottey and Magadlela the significance of fabric as a container of history and memories becomes clear. Its physical and conceptual malleability highlights its ability to be a tool for preservation, reflection and identity.

12 April 2018
Gypsy Sport: A rising leader of consciousness in fashion

Having showcased in major fashion capitals such as New York, Paris and Milan, Gypsy Sport has proven to be insurgent in disrupting the elite fashion scene with its honest and progressive social commentary. The New York-based urban street wear label founded in 2012 by Rio Uribe is inspired by the ideals of inclusivity, true diversity and community.

It Is almost impossible to divorce the socio-political statements that Gypsy Sport makes from its garments. The authentic and soulful label offers gender-fluid, non-binary clothing that incorporates highly creative silhouettes as well as eclectic textiles and prints. Gypsy Sport takes a pan-ethnic approach to fashion in which their clothing is derived from a mash up of various cultural influences whilst managing to absolve themselves from cultural appropriation.

Another refreshing aspect from the label is the demographic of models that are featured in their runway shows and global campaigns. With the emergence of Gypsy Sport, Uribe began scouting for models within his community and group of friends which resulted in vibrant shows and photoshoots. The label which also champions for body positivity has since become a beacon of representation for marginalized groups such as black folk, brown folk, trans folk, queer folk and Muslim folk.

The multidimensional and layered nature of the label has equipped it with the ability to manoeuvre itself through different creative and political spaces. Their musical ventures include a mixtape in collaboration with New York-based DJ Anthony Dicap which was released for the label’s Fall 2017 collection. Gypsy Sport was also thoroughly involved in 2017’s LGBTQ celebrations by volunteering at LGBTQ youth centres across four cities, namely Los Angeles, New York, Portland and San Francisco. The Pride celebrations comprised of a trans march advocating for transgender and non-binary rights, queer parties, clothing drives and pop-up shops in which all proceeds were donated towards youth community development.

Gypsy Sport recognizes the great significance in positively impacting the community and has a deep-rooted understanding that it can be achieved through multiple channels. Their passion for the community is evident in their casting calls with the most recent one being open to whole families and seeking for artists, dancers, singers, activists, athletes and geeks to model the label’s clothing at New York Fashion Week.

It’s quite fitting that Gypsy Sport identifies as rebels because that is exactly what they are – they defy the status quo, triumphantly dismantle binaries, challenge various fronts of injustices and essentially disrupt stagnant spaces. They manage to do all of that whilst setting the bar high with their fashion forward brand. 2018 will be an exciting year to see how this dynamic and intentional label will continue to stretch limitations in the fashion industry to expand Uribe’s vision in creating a worldwide fashion tribe.

18 January 2018
Orphan Street Clothing Shop – an innovative space defying mainstream retail experiences

Cape Town’s fashion narrative has expanded to encompass a new phase within the increasingly world class city with the opening of Orphan Street Clothing Shop, on Orphan Street. The store launched on the 2 November attracting lovers of street style and modern-day chic alike. The idea for this new dynamic space came about from husband and wife duo, Matt and Molly Kieser. O.S.C.S houses the Maylee and Sol-Sol brands, designed by the pair individually.

Progression within the Cape Town fashion landscape has accelerated resulting in a more interwoven aesthetic with a distinct approach to design, textiles and imagined buyers. Features on multiple platforms such as Bubblegum Club, Hyperbeast, and Highsnobiety acts as forms of a testament to the accolades that Sol-Sol has received over the years. Explaining why South-African fashion-centrics and other street style fanatics over the globe regard the label not only as trusted but as one of our nation’s greatest.

Maylee might not be as widely celebrated as Sol-Sol regardless, but Molly’s designs show an intricate understanding of the need for minimal, quality clothing for women. The small scale of her brand is an indication of personal choice and adds a certain flair to every collection that is produced. Before the launch of O.S.C.S, Sol-Sol and Maylee have operated from the well-known Corner Store shop in Cape Town. A space of their own is not only a suitable step for both brands but also a welcomed decision that can be surmised by simply looking at the turn out at their launch.

The interior design elements of the new O.S.C.S store makes use of light colours, a few darker areas and earthy elements such as some small sections of marble which was tastefully implemented. All and all a minimal, uncluttered, pristine space prescribing to modern retail design aesthetics. The smaller store set up is removed from fast paced fashion retail that can sometimes be overwhelming. Not being a fan of crowds or packed spaces and an avid admirer of these two labels, I’ll be sure to pop by the shop when I’m in town for what I imagine to be an almost tranquil shopping experience.

The launch was paired with the release of their Spring/Summer ’18 collections showcasing one-offs, a few collaborative pieces as well as superbly constructed items. The launch factored for all elements that make launches great, progressively different styles for Spring/Summer ’18, Jameson Whiskey kept everyone’s pallets quenched, and DJ’s Luca Williams and Jon Laura took charge of creating steady energy for the event with their beats.

In O.S.C.S the Kiesers have created a space seamlessly toning their ambitions for these two, praise worthy South African labels. Creating a new frontier that compliments the already fashion swarmed district. I look forward to seeing the growth of this new space on Orphan street and what the future of Maylee and Sol-Sol have in store for its devout wearers.

24 November 2017
Zohra Opoku // Threaded history

German/Ghanaian artist living and working in Accra, Zohra Opoku captivates viewers using multiple mediums including installation, photography, sculpture and video. Her thematic investigations revolve around Ghanaian traditions, spirituality and family lineage and how they relate to self-authorship and her hybrid identity. Material culture often forms the foundation of these investigations, with textiles woven together in how these thematic investigations manifest.

Image by Zohra Opoku from the series ‘Unraveled Threads’ 2017

The images that she prints on fabric speak to the intimacy and history that textiles can come to contain. In her series Queenmothers 2016, the centring of female figures is a reflection on matriarchal systems and women as creators of a sense of community among people.

Her more recent work Unraveled Threads 2017, comprised of screenprints on cotton, canvas & linen, connects to her exploration of her family lineage. Opoku did not know much about her father or her Ghanaian heritage during her childhood. In Unraveled Threads, she uses the kente cloth as a way to enhance her family history. Kente cloth varies in design, colour and pattern, each carrying stories and meaning. While the cloth is worn by different kinds of people today, it is historically associated with royalty and sacredness. It is believed that the origins of this woven cloth is that two farmers came across a spider. Amazed by the way the spider creates its web, they tried to imitate thus creating the kente design.

“Identity is always, for me, based in textile,” Opoku explains in an interview with OkayAfrica.

Image by Zohra Opoku from the series ‘Unraveled Threads’ 2017

The stories and proverbs associated with each kente design makes this form of woven cloth a carrier of ethnic history. Quite fittingly, Opoku was inspired by the kente cloth that she found in her late father’s wardrobe as the canvas on which to present her father as an Asante leader, as well as to print images of herself and her siblings. Here she not only pays homage to a father she barely knew, but also embraces the significance of kente as threaded history. This allows her to engage with her Ghanaian roots as well as her familial history. She explores her experiences growing up in the West, and what it means to confront blackness and Africa as an artist later in her life.

Image by Zohra Opoku from the series ‘Unraveled Threads’ 2017

21 August 2017
Sewing black history back on to the streets – in conversation with Nkuli Mlangeni, founder of The Ninevites.

The Ninevites was a resistance movement who scoured the South African frontier during the late 1900s. Having started the collective under The Ninevites name in 2012, Nkuli Mlangeni would do so because of how fascinated she was in its story, which was shrouded in so much myth.

What the Kagiso native found crazy was that so many people didn’t even know of their story. The Ninevites lends its name from the Bible, whose people were religious rebels who challenged God. These young men engaged in criminal activities under a colonised South Africa and sought to challenge the injustices faced by themselves as well as their people.

Yet what pushed the artist, designer, and collaborator to choose this name was the context in which she found herself working at the time. She worked in the media and curated pieces in Cape Town, and started to see how in spaces, advertising in particular, black culture was being misrepresented.

Fashion as the political

Nkuli decided that she wanted to make things, things like those made during fashion week, but would use “normal” looking people as her models. It is in the normal that she finds her inspiration. For her, black style and how she sees it occurring on downtown Johannesburg’s streets and walkways is being shown in “Move” and “Drum” Magazine. She believes two different styles are at play: those represented in Fashion week and those where she get her inspiration, from such streets and her neighbours.

The artist draws her style from Ausi Lele, from her mother’s friends, guys, the people who hang out in Kagiso. She loves the kind of style that you don’t pay too much for, the kind that requires you to work with things you already have and are most practical.

Yet there is another goal within her work, and that is about wanting to bring people together through fabric.

Nkuli recently came back from having done research in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. For her, South American cultures have similarities to those found in South Africa. Her interests lie in south-to-south collaborations where our histories are similar: there is a shared sense of a colonial history and a sense of responsibility to our waning traditions. She wants to make collaborations within this space, learning from each other’s ideas and the techniques of each other’s crafts.

It is in such a space that The Ninevites function to bring artists, designers and crafts people together. Nkuli uses this name as a facilitator in making such projects come to life. She spends her time researching and looking for artists, and then working with them to move an idea forward.

In her latest project, Nkuli worked within the collective to create intricate handmade rugs. Under the collective’s name, she brought two graphic designers, one from Brazil and the other from South Africa, to work on the styling of the rugs. She also brought in a weaver, Mario – a resident in the city of Lima in Peru.

Tradition made for now

It is through such works that we see Nkuli’s obsession with tradition, drawing particular inspiration from the way it is worn by those who follow it. She gives the example of Zionists, whose religion is steeped in traditional beliefs. She loves how their followers wear their uniforms with such pride, taking care to keep them crisp and white. Right now her biggest inspiration comes from her Ndebele heritage, paying much homage to their motifs in her works.

Nkuli’s latest works with textiles yielded a piece titled “Mangaliso rug” – a modern take on signature Ndebele design. Its name contains a history, yet its function as a rug makes it applicable to our every day lives.

Nkuli explains that in her previous works she would print the images of black heroes on children’s T-shirts. She does so to remind people that these people exist. In giving these works the images and names of people in black history, the designer has brought their story back into our lives. She sees such names as a good entry point to having the much needed conversation about our past and to make people question their own understandings of it.

Her other works also hold the names of Mangalizo, Queen Zinga, and Thomas Sankara. Nkuli is interested in such stories. She says many are not happy ones, yet they are stories that need to be told and are still relevant, as many black men and woman go through such hell, still today. They are “garden boys” during the day and then fathers at night. Many of them have grown without fathers and yet we have judges who proceed to throw stupid comments about black men, knowing nothing of the many lives that she knows nothing about.

Yet Nkuli does not consider herself political. As much as her references may be seeped in the political, she does not think of herself as knowing or being educated enough to talk about politics. She wants to work from intuition. She does it because it looks good and because it is accessible to those who would make use of it.

Black life as living history

In creating such works of homage to black life, Nkuli also hopes to move away from the misrepresentation and commodification of black life. Citing the works of Thabiso Sekgala, Santu Mofokeng, and her favourite photographer of all time Sabelo Mlangeni, she sees their works as showing the lives of black people not as objects for consumption. She draws much inspiration from the works of Alexia Webster who documented pantsula life, seeing their works as the celebration of black lives.

Looking at her work we see a creator unashamedly and beautifully borrow from local crafts and culture. We see her work as paying a type of homage to a living culture under threat in South Africa but by also remoulding it. She creates art that we can wear and use in our homes so as to re-introduce us to black heroes of our past. In doing so, Nkuli shows us how our culture can evolve to suit the complex interactions that youth have to engage in. As black bodies, we wear our history in our skin, in our clothes, and our ideas.

Nkuli’s work is tantamount to such an expression. Her work reflects a navigation of black selves in a post-colonial space in search for our own spaces. She sees fashion, textiles and style as very much being inspired by her love of cloth. Yet for her, it also plays a much deeper function of connecting people and their ideas to a common purpose.

You can follow Nkuli on Instagram and on her blog.

23 May 2016