Contemporary Textile Imagery in Southern Africa: a question of ownership

Jessica Hemmings, Editor, writes:

Sarah Rhodes is a designer, jeweller and PhD candidate at Central Saint Martins, London. She has lived for several years in Botswana and writes here about a number of development initiatives based in Southern Africa over the past thirty years. Even when the best of intentions are in place, development initiatives often struggle to establish longevity. In this chapter Rhodes discusses the use of printed textile design by several San communities who have also shown remarkable affinities in visual style even when separated by time and space. Rhodes considers the authenticity and ownership of work made by development initiatives, citing numerous examples of instances where the work of indigenous artists - including commissions by British Airways in the late 1990s - have received scant financial remuneration. Rhodes shares with Keven Murray, the author of chapter ten, an interest in how design and craft can be fostered with greater respect for the ethics of production. This chapter concludes with the discussion of a hearteningly positive example, the Art-i-San project, a rare instance of a development project that provides royalties to the displaced San artists who contribute textile designs sold as products and by the metre. Based on Namibian San communities' designs, the Art-i-San project produces printed textiles in Cape Town, South Africa and is now entering its second decade of work.