Drawing on a rich alternative culture of connections and interconnectedness, South African craft collectives transgress social divisions to make things of beauty that sustain lives.
If you take a craft-inspired road trip across South Africa, grassroots initiatives will crop up in every second dorp and city across the country, from the Karoo desert to the dark, wet tropical forests of Limpopo in the north. Drawing on vernacular cultures of making to originate fresh creations that pay homage to a patchwork past, homegrown maker-driven projects are the backbone of small creative communities across a largely divided and hectically unequal country.
Ever since the 1994 elections crafted democracy into the fabric of South African life, it has been Parliament’s role to ensure government by the people under the Constitution. It is this highest of aspirations that makes Parliament the perfect home for the Keiskamma Tapestry. An epic artwork measuring over 126 meters, its humility and symbolic power honors the dream.
Designed by Carol Hofmeyr, this enormous multiple-paneled co-creation was brought to life by the many hands of the women felters and embroiderers at the Keiskamma Art Project.
Based in the small town of Hamburg in the rural Eastern Cape, the project aims to re-establish traditional art making, particularly embroidery and textile crafts, in the area’s communities, lost due to decades of conflict, suppression and apartheid education.
“Story telling is used as a fundamental thread in the creation of Keiskamma artworks,” says Hofmeyr. Re-igniting an oral history tradition, while at the same time being inspired by the technique and format of the 11th century Bayeux Tapestry, the tapestry traces the history of the region from a rural existence based on Xhosa herding culture through to the arrival of Europeans, the frontier wars, the apartheid struggle in the Eastern Cape and democracy in 1994.
The central work is the Keiskamma Guernica, which is based on the 1937 Picasso painting that tells the story of the bombing of a small village in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. “Unlike the original Guernica, ours depicts not an instant of horror but rather a slow eating away at the whole fabric of a community,” say the creators of the work. “Each day another thread is lost, and suddenly an entire generation has disappeared. It has seemed that as we stitched in panic and in sorrow against this disintegration, more holes have appeared and gaps that could not be mended.” The work celebrates the courage and resilience of the people who live in the former Ciskei homeland where the vast majority of people are unemployed, schools are derelict and nutritious food is scarce.
In this way, the tapestry carries the message of hope in the fight against HIV/AIDS to audiences around the world, while at the same time enabling women from the villages surrounding Hamburg to earn a living by creating beautiful artworks that honor ancient histories of kinship and making.
In its conception and its celebration of South Africa’s diverse history, the tapestry captures something of the hybrid, collaborative energy that fuels the craft centered design movement in South Africa. Drawing on a rich and deep pool of vernacular traditions, creations like Haldane Martin’s iconic Zulu Mama chair and Vuyisa Potina’s reinterpretations of traditional African pottery shapes and techniques put a unique stamp on traditional forms.
Courtesy of Alexandra Dodd: South African craft and culture from HAND EYE – a magazine about connecting cultures and inspiring action. Read it!