Aesthetics of African Textiles

The diverse array of cultures across the African continent are responsible for numerous textile-making traditions including stamp printing, indigo dyeing, and strip weaving. Although this exhibition is primarily concerned with modern factory-printed commemorative cloth, the techniques used to hand-make and decorate cloth heavily influence and inspire these contemporary pieces.

One of the most instantly recognizable African textiles is the Akan kente cloth of Ghana. Patterns with proverbial meanings are woven with silk and cotton on a narrow loom. These complex geometric patterns create a vivid fabric used traditionally for wrap cloths and are frequently adapted into commercial screen prints that are more affordable and easier to tailor into new garments. A textile in this exhibition—2014.11.1, the Ghana independence textile—is a commercially printed cloth that appears heavily inspired by the vibrant green, yellow, and red angular lines of kente.

Stamp printing is also a traditional way to embellish cloth in many African cultures. Adinkra—which also originates with the Akan people of Ghana—is a technique where artisans use stamps carved from calabash gourds to apply dye to a woven cloth. Once only used for mourning, adinkra motifs typically indicate their purpose with symbols that represent certain proverbial messages of death, courage, or fortune on a background whose colour determines on which occasion the cloth would be worn.

Portrait-cloth, textiles with portraits printed in circular medallions as a repeating motif, is a uniquely African textile phenomenon heavily inspired by earlier stamp printing techniques like adinkra. This technique features heavily in our exhibition of commemorative textiles: both 2020.7.1 and 2021.1.1.a, b in our political wear segment, as well as 1988.8.8 (the Malawi independence textile) and textiles honouring heads of state (1976.22.1, 1987.4.1) feature portrait medallions.

The iconography of commemorative textiles can range from the ultra-modern to the traditional, taking inspiration from the methods above as well as bògòlanfini (Malian mud cloth), batik (Indonesian wax-resist dyeing), and wax print cloth. The East African kanga (also known as leso), a printed wrap cloth worn by women on the Swahili coast, over its long design history has been inspired by block-printed batik motifs (see 2014.11.5 and 1994.2.22 for examples) as well as printed kerchiefs sold by Portuguese merchants in coastal trading centres in the early 19th century.

African textiles are an exquisite fusion of visual beauty, historical record, auspicious (religious or supernatural) purpose, and a celebration of the wearer's culture. Some of these aesthetic elements may be obvious, while the in-group significance of other motifs or colours may be unclear to those who do not belong to that culture. Additionally, the multiple meanings and influences of these textiles may overlap and obscure—as a result, this exhibition serves as an introduction to commercially-printed African textiles for a Western audience while also aiming to "unwrap" the history of items of aesthetic and material significance in a visually-appealing and widely-accessible format.