The press day of the 56th International Art Exhibition are currently taking place in Venice. As you may already know, the theme of this year's Biennale is "All the World's Futures". The event - curated by Okwui Enwezor - will be opening to the public on Saturday and the Biennale will be on until November 22nd. One of the refreshing elements of this year's biennale is the presence of many artists of African origin.
So let's look at the African theme from a textile point of view with a comparison between fabrics that may help us creating a continuum between the previous posts that mainly revolved around fashion and this one.
The first image in this post shows dresses in Dutch wax fabrics (as previously stated, these fabrics were first adopted in West Africa in the '30s) from 1959: model Flora (the first on the left) wears a dress from the Rome-based label Lietta Shop; Pia, a yellow, red and blue dress by Léontine with a print marking the waist area, while Lucia is modelling a design by La Soffitta di Gabriella, characterised by a striking yet simple fabric belt in matching print.
Visitors to the Arsenale will instead be definitely surprised by another type of fabric - coarsely woven jute fiber sacks.
This is the main material employed by Ibrahim Mahama for his slightly Burri-esque monumental installation entitled "Out of Bounds" and covering the corridor of the Troncone section of the Arsenale.
The artist was still studying painting and sculpture at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology when he started working with local traders and market sellers making large-scale installations of jute fibre sacks.
He then involved migrant workers from the north of the country and students who became active in the production of his installations. Mahama's "Occupation" series started in 2012 and continued to expand, becoming more ambitious scale-wise: the artist covered indeed with his experimental textiles market spaces, footbridges and old train stations, reclaiming them and giving them a new configuration and life.
Traded across Ghana, the jute sacks implicitly confront the notions of trade, labour, and export that connect Ghana and the rest of the world.
The sacks are indeed manufactured in Southeast Asia and imported into Ghana by produce buyers who use them to bag cocoa and other commodities before distributing them to end-users all over the world.
Being used to exchange commodities, the sacks reference the history of Ghana's political and financial economies, but - even though the artist claims his works do not have any socialist aims - they also hint at markets as places of inequalities and labour exploitation, while commenting on the effects of globalisation.
The jute sacks are marked with the names of various owners, so once integrated in Mahama's installations they encapsulate personal narratives and become tangible proofs of intangible identities.
Craft-wise there are many different processes in this installation, such as sewing, draping, cladding and hanging. At times the sacks are sewn together by brightly coloured stitches, while in other cases they are covered with small sequin-like metal disks and seals, something that adds a tactile quality to the pieces.
Organisers state the installation is not just a fabricated environment, but will become a living organism during the months of the exhibition since it will prompt visitors to go beyond the mere sacks and think about the personal narratives and identities of the owners and of the people who used them and sewn them together. Let's hope the installation won't attract voracious Venetian rats, though, otherwise it will become a nest for very different living organisms...
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