New Exhibitions
ALEXIA WALKER: Lowly textiles are superbly wrenched from their contexts to create high art
Works on show at Cape Town's Norval Foundation point to the use of the materials as a widespread practice in contemporary art
Two exhibitions running until August at the Norval Foundation in Cape Town, Yinka Shonibare’s Trade Winds and Ibrahim Mahama’s Labour of Many point to the use of textiles as a widespread practice in contemporary art. It is certainly nothing new. Weaving, embroidering, quilting and crocheting are among some of the oldest art forms. Since the 20th century however, artists have begun to use textiles in different contexts and often to express sociopolitical concerns. The Nigerian-English Shonibare is renowned for the use of African fabrics in his sculptures, installations and photographs. He has explained that he chose this particular material because it confronts and subverts the very notion of a single cultural experience. Through his artworks, he asks why nowadays people still insist on a singular identity. Indeed Shonibare discovered that what is accepted as African fabrics were in fact manufactured in the 19th century by the Dutch to copy the wax-printed batiks made in Indonesia. T...
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