Embroidery Bearing Witness
Bertha and Pinky with Mapula Embroidery.
On September 7th, a fascinating exhibition of South African embroideries will open at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles. It’s called, Bearing Witness: Embroidery as History in Post-Apartheid South Africa It will feature the work of two groups that I’ve been closely connected to over the past 10 years through my fair trade imports, African Threads and my cultural tours to South Africa.
The Mapula (means Mother of Rain) Embroidery group is from the Winterveld and Kaross , the other group, is from Limpopo Province South Africa. Both groups are featured in the Fowler show. William Worger, who collected most of the pieces for this exhbition, is giving a talk on October 16 at the Fowler, if you’re lucky enough to be close by to take it in. Bill is a professor of African history at UCLA.
We’ll be visiting both these textile groups (among others) on my tour to South Africa next April. Learn more about this special arts, culture and textile tour here. Here, Bertha and Pinky Resenga hold a Mapula embroidery about community health and water safety, taken when I visited this group about 6 years ago.
This last piece is from the Kaross Group in Limpopo. It is a large embroidered tapesty of the Rain Queen and is part of my collection. Drop me a line if your interested in acquiring any hangings.
Modjaji Rain Queen
These embroideries are astounding, Valerie.
It is even more amazing to see and feel them in real life, rather than just images, and I treasure the ones I’ve been able to purchase from you through African threads.
xx
Thanks Judy, it’s been an honour to work so closely with these embroideries. It is even more of a thrill to visit the women’s groups in South Africa when we take our tour group there.