New Exhibition: “Yards of Style, African-Print Cloths of Ghana” at the Fowler Museum, UCLA

Fowler in Focus: Yards of Style, African-Print Cloths of Ghana
Aug 24–Dec 14, 2014
”The larger markets in West Africa offer everything from foodstuffs to scrap metal to used clothing—and they also boast hundreds and hundreds of stalls filled with printed cloth. With some vendors selling just a few cloths and others featuring enormous stacks of six- and twelve-yard panels, these markets offer something for everyone. Ubiquitous throughout urban and rural Africa as garments and head wraps, African-print cloths are also popping up on fashion show runways and in retail fashion catalogs in the United States and Europe.

African market vendors may carry cloths made in Holland, Ghana and other West African nations, as well as China, assuring a wide choice of prices and styles that will cater to their diverse customer base. The vibrant visual imagery on the textiles is equally varied, from everyday items like car keys, neckties, clothespins, electric fans, and cell phones, to chiefly swords and royal regalia, to the likenesses of world leaders and sports celebrities (Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, and Muhammad Ali, to name just a few!). As such, these double-sided, factory-produced cloths communicate messages about individual and community values, reveal perspectives on taste and fashion, and offer telling insights into the global economy.

This exhibition is curated by Betsy D. Quick, Director of Education and Curatorial Affairs, Fowler Museum at UCLA, with Suzanne Gott, Art History and Visual Culture, Department of Critical Studies, University of British Columbia, Okanagan.”

“The Fashionable Hair”– Africa’s coastal style in the 1900s

These images are from two series of postcards produced between 1900 and 1910 by the photographer F.W.H Arkhurst in Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast. Arkhurst, a member of the Nzima ethnic group born in the Gold Coast , was a timber exporter who lived in Assinie and later in Grand Bassam. His studio photographs capture perfectly the then fashionable style of  women’s dress along the African coast from the Niger Delta to the Ivory Coast as families grew prosperous from trading opportunities in the expanding colonial economies. Hair was swept high and adorned with gold jewellery or wrapped in cloth, tailored dress was of imported cotton prints, often with a shawl or wrap of locally woven fabrics.

Long Live the President ! – African printed cloths exhibition in Amsterdam now.

“Long Live the President ! Portrait Cloths from Africa” now at the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam (2 April – 29 August 2010). The exhibition, curated by Paul Faber, features over 100 African printed fabrics devoted mainly to commemorating African presidents, both the well known such as Mandela and Mobutu and the now perhaps justly obscure. The show includes East African kanga as well as printed pagne from West and Central Africa. It is accompanied by a catalogue in English (details here) that is the first substantive publication devoted to this important aspect of African textile design.

I am pleased to note that a large part of the show is drawn from the French private collection we featured on our website here back in 2005. Follow the link for more images and background information on African commemorative prints. Thanks to Bernard Collet, the collector of these pieces, for the images of the exhibition shown below. Click any photo for a larger view.

Curator Paul Faber discusses the exhibition (in Dutch)