Claudio Torres is a Chilean artist/architect/musician who for the last four years has been working in various development projects in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. In response to this call, he proposed a project involving ‘a painted mural on a ghetto wall’. Well, he is now at the point of realising this idea and is seeking support. He needs US$500 for materials, US$500 for rental and US$300 for a small daily allowance paid to the crew of youngsters who will paint the mural, to ensure it is finished in time.

To cover these costs, we are releasing 65 tickets at US$20 each. You can think of these as admission fees to see the mural, but that would involve also a ticket to Nairobi which isn’t covered by the ticket cost. Or you can consider it a small donation that helps spread art a little more widely around the world. Follow www.craftunbound.net to see the results.

You can see Claudio explain the idea here:

Basically, Claudio is using an A3 poster as a sketchbook which he is distributing to the people in the ghetto of Mathare. Designs for the mural will then be put up for popular vote among the people in the ghetto. The winner will be then painted on the ghetto wall for one month.

Can you help?

Here is the original proposal:

First of all, how to get to meet fine local artists?

Then, where to show?

Given most developing countries’ lack of what’s understood by western standards as art museums and galleries and the artists around them, and given also the shortage of art schools and markets, it seems suitable to address this collaborative work as a

PUBLIC COMPETITION FOR A PAINTED MURAL ON A RENTED GHETTO WALL.

1- To avoid biases or shortfalls in choosing local artists, a competition is the soundest way to tap into an un-reached art world, one surely driven by different aesthetic and social motivations. A prize is due to attract and rightly benefit artists that usually don’t get much in retribution for their work.

The actual production of the mural will be carried out by the local and foreign artists together.

2- Those few museums and galleries that exist are even more elitist and inaccessible than their occidental counterparts, allowing the artworks that they deal with to be seen by few people and at best reach only a few rich living rooms.

So, in countries where public art is at the bottom of the development needs’ list, a public wall is the right place to show and share; half of the urban population lives in overcrowded and service-less slums, therefore a ‘ghetto wall’ must be the right place.

3- Most third world walls are rented to big companies’ publicity. They get the best ones, often bordering highly-populated slums. Here is where the north-south collaboration can materialise. Money collected internationally (through web pages, etc.) and among the slum-dwellers will pay the rent for the mural. The show will last until is not possible to pay the rent anymore and the public wall returns to the dictates of free-market.

Thus, as important as the art work in itself is the time that the mural will last: a sort of ‘partnership-indicator’.

4- If more money than the needed is raised, a new competition must be held and another wall will be won for public delight and wellbeing.

The wall is waiting:

Tickets on sale here until 15 November: ghettowall.eventbrite.com

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Benin is a West African country with a strong craft tradition. In the past, craft guilds specialising in brass, ivory, wood, embroidery and leather resided in palace of the Oba (king). They mingled with the leopard hunters, astrologers, drummers, chiefs and priests. Unlike other courtly crafts in Africa, their traditions thrive, particularly in the production of dramatic Gelede masks.

One of the most important festivals in Benin is the Gelede, which honours female elders. Key to this festival is a dance with a costume that consists of a mask (aworan), headwrap (oja) and leg rattles (iku) which protect their wearer against aje. In this festival a mask is worn by men masquerading as women in order to please the mothers, particularly the destructive aje who otherwise might use witchcraft against them. It is seen to have developed in the late eighteenth century in the transition from matriarchal to patriarchal society.

The masks represent ‘children’ of the mothers and so reflect the diversity of the world. Sometimes masks satirise foreigners, exaggerating their facial features.

Gelede masks are still made in southern Benin. They are exported to Cuba and Brazil in particular. Apart from curios, it is interesting to consider what possibilities these masks might have. Can their makers be commissioned to use masks as statements about the world at large?

Notes

• Henry John Drewal ‘Gelede Masquerade: Imagery and Motif’ African Arts Vol. 7, No. 4 (Summer, 1974), pp. 8-19+62-63+95-96
• Thanks to Martin Tonoukon for images.

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Remarkably, Hlengiwe manages to sustain both her own work as a skilled crafter with a vocation for promoting Zulu crafts as a whole. She has a firm belief in self-reliance through craftwork and the richness of Zulu tradition. These combine in her recent products for beaded cell phone pouches and handbags ornamented with tin top buttons.

Craft is the third largest employer in the South African economy. For most poor people, is the only means by which they can advance themselves. With Hlengiwe’s recent work we see the great potential for product development in South African craft.

This is her statement about the work that she has made for The World of Small Things.

RECYCLED BAGS AND EARRINGS

I am very aware of the “Keep environment Clean “campaign and as a South African citizen, I am very perturbed at the amount of litter that is strewn about on the streets, the verges and the beaches. I had noticed that a lot of this litter comprised of cool drink cans.

The government seems to have “won the war” on the plastic bag saga, but tin cans still contributes to a huge percentage of litter strewn about. I feel this matter needs serious attention.

I then came up with the idea of making bags using tin top buttons and earrings using bottle tops. I source my supply from the local dump, roadside bins and even have neighbours and street children collect them for me. I wash and sterilize them, and then they are ready to be weaved together and transformed into bags.

I weave the buttons using cotton and beads. I give the entire tin to the other artist who makes caps and belts.

I enjoy weaving with recycle material and I also do lot of weaving with recycled telephone wire strings. I believe that weaving is the way of communicating with other people, in our culture women used to visit each other and bring their mats to weave and share ideas of how to take care of their families. For me weaving is to share my feeling through it, communicate with people through my weaving. I like to incorporate it with beads, because when I first fell in love with beads I was only 12 years old, since then I have been working with beads non stop and creating new ideas.

I always enjoy sharing my experience with other people to create jobs so that they can earn a living, because I believe that as long as you have two functional hands you will never starve.

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Jewellery of natural fibers from Butare, Rwanda, designed and made in cooperation with Martina Dempf, Germany (photograph by Sebastian Ahlers)

The range of jewellery made by Martina Dempf in collaboration with basket weavers from Rwanda shows an intriguing combination of cultures. The vibrant designs and fine weaving of African grass is housed within elegantly crafted European silver. How did this collaboration come about?

Martina Dempf is a jeweller based in Berlin. She studied jewellery at Pforzheim under Rheinhold Reiling. While still a student, she took half a year to work as a volunteer in a project by Swiss Aid based in Lesotho (Southern Africa) with a jewellery company called the Royal Crown Jewellers.

At the end of her course, Martina travelled with her husband through the whole African continent  (Egypt to South Africa), where she decided to study anthropology. She completed a MA thesis in the Free University of Berlin (‘People Adorned. The Material Culture of the Toposa in Southern Sudan and the Turkana in Northern Kenya’). During the 1980s, she conducted field trips in Sudan, Kenya, Eritrea, Dschibuti and Yemen. Her recent field trips have included Turkana, Kenya (2006) and Toposa, Southern Sudan (2008)

Intashya style basket made by the cooperative of Nyamagabe (COPAF) incorporating natural body black pattern; Component: inside bamboo decoration swamp grass

Martina Dempf, Necklace “In the eye of the snake” 2002, 925 silver, s

During one of these trips in 1986, she visited Rwanda, where she saw the fine grass-woven small baskets and thought they could be used to make jewellery. Traditionally, small baskets were made for the royal court. In 2007, she approached GTZ (German Technical Co-operation) and was invited to work with a group of 40 women in Butare who were organized in a crafts association (Rwanda Art). Martina found a thesis on traditional Rwandan crafts and together with the women, they created a collection of grass jewellery. The women created the grass centre while Martina makes the silver casing. Martina is also working with artisans in Laos and Cambodia.

Necklace with 4 pearls round and 3 disks in swamp grass made by women in Butare

The Rwandan craftswomen continue to produce jewellery designs that emerged from their collaboration with Martina, and Martina also continues to source Rwandan components for her jewellery.

The swamp (papyrus) grass jewellery is made by Dafan Mukantabashwa, Virginie Uwizeyimana, Pelagie Nyirahabineza, Alphonsine Urayeneza and Valentine Nyirakimonyo. The sisal jewellery is made by Anizerata Nyitanteziyaremye, Suzanne Uwitije, Daphrose and Libératha.

As with any collaboration between artisans from rich and poor countries, we are left with many questions. What does jewellery mean to Rwandans? Is it something purely for export? Were there new skills required in adapting basket-weaving to jewellery making? Can the aesthetic worth of Martina’s jewellery be distinguished from its ethical value? Does its ethical value make us predisposed to enjoy her work more or are we wary that our appreciation is predetermined by our politics?

Thanks to jewellers like Martina for opening up these issues, as well as making objects for us to enjoy. And thanks to Rwandan craftswomen for sharing their culture in a medium for us that we consider precious.

You can see the jewellery produced by Martina and the Rwandan woman at the World of Small Things, in Craft Victoria 18 June – 25 July.

Links

· www.martina-dempf.de

· www.rwanda-art.com

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Erica Elk

She reflects on the speech that opened the recent DAC Craft Awards:

Minister of Arts & Culture, Pallo Jordan, gave an interesting and thought provoking speech. The comment that stuck in my mind, which I paraphrase, was that we must be careful not to bend too easily to the dictates of product developers and trend forecasters who tell us how to adjust our products so they are more ‘palatable’ to international markets.  The danger is that one day we may land up having sold our cultural heritage down the river, producing homogenised products that look like everything else in the world – which is basically what’s happened in the high streets of all the major cities around the globe.

Right now, one of the reasons why our products are so popular is because they are so different and innovative and creative and clever and capture the spirit of the people of South Africa. And we mustn’t lose this.  The Minister has a very good point. We should guard our heritage and indigenous knowledge. But that doesn’t mean we should not be sharp enough to play the market at its own game – or get trapped into thinking that culture and knowledge is static. Because both those approaches could be dead-end roads. So how do we manage this contradiction between staying true to self and playing to market forces? I think part of the solution is the critical interface between education, culture and trade and the respective roles played by the departments of economic development, trade & industry, arts & culture, recreation, and education at all tiers of government.

They need to work together – which doesn’t mean doing the same thing.  It should mean doing different things together – in synergy – towards a common goal. Arts & Culture programmes need to nurture creativity, heritage, language and identity.  They should promote, preserve and protect to create the foundation for challenge, growth, innovation, experimentation, exploration and play.  They must help us explore who we are, where we’ve come from, and where we are going to – individually and collectively. They must set standards of excellence and not settle for mediocrity.  And they must do so without being prescribed to by the markets.

Economic and trade programmes need to engage with supply and demand issues – the provision and purchasing of products and services.  They need to nurture entrepreneurs, create an enabling environment, deal with infrastructure and logistical blockages, they must also market and promote and create opportunities and make connections. And simultaneously our education system needs to work to develop the skills, knowledge and confidence of the youth – so that they can express their real selves and not an imposed idea of self.

Without all of the above our products will become homogenised, as our minds and aesthetic judgment are ‘colonised’ by the barrage of images and products from the rest of the world. We’ve lived for so long in a country where things have literally been reduced to black or white – good or bad – that we lose sight of the nuances and complexities of our various realities and experiences.

Instead of it having to be a question of EITHER/OR … what about if it could be BOTH/AND…? While sometimes we do have to make choices – thankfully only every five years and this one’s over! – for the remaining 365×5 days we need to live with opposites and contradictions and different ideas and opposing opinions and views. How we manage to live and thrive in this space will ultimately impact on our success. Right now, I’m really hoping that our newly elected government gets this message.

Reproduced with permission. Innovative South African craft will be represented in the upcoming World of Small Things exhibition with new work by Hlengiwe Dube.

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Sculpture by Geraldine Fenn

The jewellery scene in South Africa has kept a very low profile. Perhaps here’s why.

Three jewellers from Johannesburg have an exhibition at Bell Roberts Gallery titled Tales from the Mantelpiece. Philippe Bousquet, originally an architect, works with family identity as a link between vintage objects. Geraldine Fenn, with a background in archeology and art history, works with trophies and glass domes. And Marchand van Tonder, a jeweller for 25 years, has created ‘Tales of Grimm’ that explore the dark side of fairy tales.

With such a taste for the miniature, clearly you have to look very hard to discover what jewellers are up to in South Africa. But it seems worth the effort.

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Most of the studies of African art available in this country have been written by outsiders. And, while these accounts can be informative, there is a level of understanding that only an insider can provide. For this reason, Africa Direct is proud to present Zulu Beadwork: Talk with Beads. Its author, Hlengiwe Dube, is a Zulu woman raised in a traditional family. She has been director of the African Art Centre in Durban, South Africa, for many years. Her relationship with Zulu beadwork is direct and personal, much of it drawn from her own experience or stories passed down by her mother and grandmother. In Zulu Beadwork: Talk with Beads, she makes her expertise available to readers everywhere. In an engaging, conversational style, she talks about the “unspoken words” of traditional beadwork designs. Each color of bead, and each combination of colors, creates a different message. From the white beads that assure a lover, “Whenever I see you my heart goes white as the milk of cattle when they are milked in the morning,” to the green beads that proclaim, “I am going to wait for my husband as he works in Johannesburg,” Hlengiwe Dube leads us through the fascinating complexities of beadwork messages. Illustrated throughout with beautiful color photographs and including chapters on historical and regional trends, Zulu Beadwork: Talk with Beads is a must-read for anyone interested in learning about African art from the people who create it.

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Mapfara’s work is a largely personal celebration of life force. In rough English, he describes it as ‘bestial’. It’s hard to know whether his creatures are made of one or two beings. They are definitely sexual, perhaps hermaphroditic. Apparently his forms have loosened a little since being in Melbourne. Hard to think that’s an influence of Melbourne, but perhaps Mapfara became a little more Mozambican while he was here.

Made in Mozambique – Ho Gan Gallery 210 Smith Street, Collingwood; 15-29 January 2009.

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A young ceramicist from Maputo Mozambique has arrived in Melbourne for six months thanks to a Commonwealth Fellowship. This is a once in a life time opportunity to experience another world of ceramics, art and craft. Here he is with Vipoo Srivilasa and Chris Headley, who warmly welcomed him into their studio. Above is an example of some of the strange fantastic creatures that he has made out of clay back home. There’s rumour of an exhibition of his work with another Mozambican artist in February next year.

Before the studio visit, Mapfara and I had a look at Look!, the new show of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia. I was curious to see this show as the website said that ‘several artists in Look! embrace craft handwork and a folk art sensibility in the creative process’. Indeed there are some intriguingly made works in the show, such as ceramics by Janet Korakas and glass sculpture by Nick Mangan. Interestingly, the show overall had a baroque feel, with highly ornamented objects particularly skulls and motorbikes. This can be a challenging style, but risks lapsing into the mere ornamental. This isn’t helped by the strangely flat title of the exhibition, ‘Look’, even with the exclamation mark. I fear the deadening hand of the media department on that one. Nonetheless, great to see the NGV:A venturing into the third dimension.

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