We moved about six months back into a larger unit within Alfies Antique Market. I’m finally happy with the layout after a series of mostly quite minor re-arrangements and will post photos soon. In the meantime here are two recent images from the Alfies Market Pinterest page.
Eyo or Adamorisha, is the signature masquerade performance of Lagos island, still enacted as an annual festival event. Today the performers wear imported white lace robes and veils but images from the early colonial era , above, show a combination of agbada gowns in various colours with locally woven openwork aso oke cloths similar to the two now very rare C19th examples shown above. We can imagine the performers borrowing women’s shawls from wives or mothers for this purpose, and that there participation in the spiritually charged performance added an additional layer of meaning to the textiles.
For more details on the shawls please visit out Nigerian men’s weaving gallery here. For robes see our agbada gallery.
The second masquerade picture above is in the British Museum, ref Af,A51.75. Other images authors collection.
Today’s post marks an update to our gallery of Fanti Asafo flags from Ghana with a focus on two of the remarkable women’s hair styles of the region. [The first three images are from our collection, the fourth courtesy of the Smithsonian Eliot Elisofon archive. ]
Here are the complete flags:
For more details please visit our gallery online here.
“We Face Forward is an exhibition of contemporary art from West Africa, shown across three venues: Manchester Art Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery and the Gallery of Costume, Platt Hall. It features painting, photography, textiles, sculpture, video and sound work from 32 artists from 9 countries in West Africa. Recent art, much of which has never been shown in the UK before, is shown alongside new commissions made especially for Manchester.
The idea for this exhibition grew from the many West African textiles in Manchester galleries; evidence of the historic links between West Africa and Manchester from the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the hosting of the Pan-African Congress in 1945. These links are also reflected today in the many people of West African descent who are Mancunians.
In 1960, Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah said “We face neither East nor West: we face forward” stating his resistance to Cold War super powers. The exhibition takes its direction from Nkrumah’s statement of independence and celebrates the dynamism and creativity of West African artists today. We Face Forward also highlights the pressing global concerns present in the work of these artists: matters of economic and cultural exchange, environment and sustainability and the place of tradition in contemporary culture. The emblem of the exhibition is a new artwork designed by Meschac Gaba. His flag, which flies at each venue, is entitled Ensemble and combines all the West African nations with the Union Jack in a gesture of solidarity and friendship.
At Manchester Art Gallery you can see large scale works which explore ideas of trade and cultural exchange and issues of migration and freedom of movement. Barthélémy Toguo’s enormous new commission Redemption, El Anatsui’s dazzling multi coloured textile sculpture and Nnenna Okore’s vast wall sculpture When the Heavens Meet dominate the main gallery. Another room is devoted to environmental issues explored from different angles with film, photography and painting. There are also works scattered throughout the historic building. Look out for Aboubakar Fofana’s new commission Obsession suspended from the atrium ceiling, Romuald Hazoumè’s masks, Emeka Ogboh’s soundwork outside the front door and Pascale Marthine Tayou’s Poupées Pascale (Pascale’s Dolls) which infect the historic galleries like a ‘colonial perfume’.
Works shown at the Whitworth include a major new commission by Pascale Marthine Tayou, entitled The World Falls Apart, an interior forest populated by masks and sculptures, that spills out into the neighbouring park. Romuald Hazoumè’s films and sculpture highlight the local impact of consumerism and globalisation, and Amadou Sanogo’s paintings are inspired by the international news. In contrast, the contemplative black and white photography of Nii Obodai is a personal journey of rediscovery of his home country of Ghana, and Bartélémy Toguo’s watercolour expresses intimate human experiences. Georges Adéagbo traces cultural and historical resonances across continents, while Victoria Udondian weaves textiles combining materials sourced in Manchester and Nigeria. Lucy Azubuike’s collages and François-Xavier Gbré’s photographs document the creative forces of change.
The Whitworth also hosts an outpost of the Raw Materials Company, a centre for art, knowledge and society in Dakar, Senegal. A talk, screening or other event takes place in this space every Saturday afternoon.
At the Gallery of Costume, photographs by Malick Sidibé, Abderramane Sakaly, Soungalo Malé and Hamidou Maiga are being shown alongside contemporary fashion pieces designed by British-Nigerian designer Duro Olowu. All four photographers’ works show how Mali re-envisioned the idea of the studio portrait in the second half of the twentieth century, giving a West African twist to the art form. Olowu has achieved great recognition in the world of fashion, winning New Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards in 2005. He references his African heritage in vibrant, bold, graphic prints, exotic colours and patchwork techniques.”
2 June – 16 September 2012.
Photo: Nnenna Okore, When the Heavens Meet, 2011. Photo Jonathan Greet, courtesy October Gallery, London
Dogon weaver in the village of Aouguine, Mali, September 2010.
Koro Guindo spinning cotton thread, Aouguine, Mali, September 2010.
Both photographs copyright Huib Blom. Please do not reproduce without permission from Huib who can be reached at his site www.dogon-lobi.ch where you can also order his remarkable book of photographs.
For an important discussion of the rather controversial topic of Dogon weaving see Bernhard Gardi’s recent contribution to the French exhibition catalogue Dogon by Hélène Leloup (Somogy, 2011).
All these images are by one of my favourite of the early African studio photographers, A.James, active in Conakry circa 1900-1910. As far as I am aware, and unlike many of his contemporaries, his life and work has as yet not been researched. They are superbly evocative images, combining poise, beauty, fashionable hairstyles, jewellery, locally woven and imported textiles ….
The latest issue of Hali magazine (#171, Spring 2012 – available from www.hali.com ) has two worthwhile articles on aspects of African textiles.
This beautiful and rare cloth, formerly owned by the celebrated Parisian couturier Paul Poiret and recently acquired by the MFA Boston, is the subject of an interesting and thought provoking “Masterpiece” appraisal by dealer Andres Moraga. As he points out there is still considerable uncertainty in the identification of some of these more obscure styles of blue and white cloth, woven with often quite subtle variations over a wide area under the influence of the dispersal of Mande weavers of Malian origin over many centuries. This piece is tentatively attributed to Sierra Leone on the basis of comparison with two published cloths in the Lamb collection (Gilfoy 1987 numbers 8 & 12), but to my mind is far more likely to be from northwestern Ivory Coast along with the two related cloths in the Quai Branly. In fact I would suggest that the two cloths Gilfoy published are likely not to have been woven in Sierra Leone either (for what its worth my guess would be Mali and northwestern Ivory Coast respectively.) In any event two things are clear. Firstly this is a fine and rare cloth with an exceptional provenance that deserves the consideration it is given in the article. Secondly we can note how little is known about the cloths of this whole sub-region and how much further research is urgently required.
Ros Weaver’s article Saharan Chic is a well researched introduction to the plant fibre and leather mats of the Tuareg and Maures of the Sahara, illustrated with some superb examples in the collection of Rafaelle Carrieri of the Altai Gallery, Milan.
