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Ezakwantu -
Beadwork from
the
Eastern
Cape
South African National
Gallery
Igalari YoBuzwe
yoMzantsi Afrika
Suid-Afrikaanse
Nasionale Kunsmuseum
Ezakwantu
-
Beadwork from
the Eastern Cape
South African National
Gallery
Igalari YoBuzwe
yoMzantsi Afrika
Suid-Afrikaanse
Nasionale Kunsmuseum
Ezakwantu - Beadwork from the
Eastern Cape - Pages 66 & 56
Ezakwantu - Beadwork from
the Eastern Cape, is an exhibition catalogue. The exhibition took place
at the South African National Gallery between October 1993 and May 1994. The
exhibition catalogue seems to represent an ideological attempt to
bring the politics of the day and Eastern Cape beadwork onto the
center stage at National Gallery level.
Ezakwantu - Beadwork from the
Eastern Cape - Page 5
At the time, Marilyn Martin was the Director of the
South African National Gallery, an entity which was considered by many as
Eurocentric. Her intentions to transform the focus and direction of the
collections and exhibitions had merit. Public art galleries across
the country were falling over themselves in frantic attempts to 'please'
or 'appease' the changing 'New South Africa' as they interpreted it.
'Art' from the majority population was under represented in the
institutions, if represented at all.
Ezakwantu - Beadwork from the
Eastern Cape - Page 55
Imagine the disappointment when the National Gallery
was unable to persuade Nelson Mandela to open the event. We were told that
in search of an alternative star attraction,
Walter Sisulu was scheduled - but then cancelled. We understand that his wife Albertina Sisulu
agreed to attend, but for a reason unknown to us, did not. To the surprise of
the curatorial team, little or no interest was shown from what was to become
the new government.
Similar frustrations were duplicated throughout the country at related
venues.
Ezakwantu - Beadwork from the
Eastern Cape - Pages 43 & 27
The catalogue includes the
following essays:
Exploring Meanings and
Identities: beadwork from the Eastern Cape in the South African National
Gallery by Emma Bedford,
Ezakwantu eGalari yeSizwe
by Sipho Ndabambi
Beadwork: the heart of
tradition and culture by Thami Ngwevela
The Magic of Beadwork by
Abner Nyamende
Tracing Cultural Roots
by Christina Jikelo
Adornment as Art: an
ethnographic perspective by Patricia Davison
Women's Work: or engendering
the art of beadwork in Southern Africa by Sandra Klopper
Towards a History of Glass
Beads by Sharma Saitowitz
The Bead Rush: development
of the nineteenth-century bead trade from Cape Town to King William's Town
by Carol Kaufmann
Through the Barrel of a
Bead: the personal and the political in the beadwork of the Eastern Cape
by Andre Proctor and Sandra Klopper
Drawing the Bead on Blacks:
Eastern Cape people painted by Baines, shot by Pocock by Gary van Wyk
The Social Life of Beads:
expressive uses of beadwork in the Eastern Cape by Lindsay Hooper.
Ezakwantu - Beadwork from the
Eastern Cape - Page 69
A number of contributors
were cited in the South African Archaeological Bulletin 49: 104-106,
1994. Though soundly
critiqued, missing in the cataloged review was
a refute to Gary van Wyk's misleading assertion that Thomas
Baines had distorted and manipulated both the size and bead colour of bonnets
illustrated on page 69 - Plates 10 and 11. Van Wyk need only to have visited the East London Museum to discover two exceedingly large examples in a group
of six, or the British Museum where he would have come in contact with a beaded red and white
example.
Ezakwantu - Beadwork from the
Eastern Cape - Page 22
In our view, placing a large sign
next to a nationally owned artwork by Thomas
Baines, that contained the
text of Van Wyk's unnecessary
sexist 'nipple' rant, was
zealous reverse racist rhetoric - sponsored with State funds.
I.e. it is certainly clear that Baines pays particular
attention to the nipples of the woman carrying corn. Notice how the far
nipple is like a bulls-eye in the centre of the target-like format of the
painting; how prominent the nipple is in the profile of the woman; how this
nipple forms the terminal point of a strong diagonal that runs up from the
woman's left foot; how it points at the echoes of the mountain on the left
that presages for Victorian readers Sir Rider Haggard's invention of a pair
of mountains called Queen Sheba's Breasts.
Van Wyk falsely declares:
The incebetha (breast covering) worn by western Xhosa-speakers from the
nineteenth century was of soft skin or fabric, decorated with beads if the
wearer could afford it. Nipples could not in fact protrude through the solid
covering.
The only
purpose his allegations served were to defame the good name of a (defenceless) artist. Members of the
public found the insertion disgusting and to this day, are repulsed by the
ideological decision for its inclusion,
in what would otherwise have been a fantastic exhibition display.
Ezakwantu - Beadwork from the
Eastern Cape - Pages 109 & 105
Catalogue REVIEW
The
following review by M. Wood was published in the
South African Archaeological Bulletin 49: 104-106, 1994.
BEDFORD, E. (ed.) Ezakwantu: Beadwork
from the Eastern Cape. 1993. Cape Town: South African National
Gallery. 112 pp. 13 colour plates. 61 b&w photographs. ISBN
1-874817-10-3.
Ezakwantu: Beadwork from the Eastern Cape is the title of the
catalogue produced by the South African National Gallery (SANG) to
accompany and explain their exhibition (31 October 1993 to 29 May
1994) of the same name. A fair amount of explaining takes place in
its pages since the gallery is obviously trying to redefine its
direction and role in the emerging New South Africa and doesn’t seem
to know yet what direction it should take. This attempt to refocus
the gallery toward a broader section of society is an honest and
surely necessary endeavour but a thorny task indeed. The fact that
museums are a European invention and therefore Eurocentric in
organization cannot be changed. but their content and appeal to
those from other cultures can and should be reexamined. A successful
resolution of this dilemma will not be rapidly or painlessly
achieved.
Although in her foreword gallery director Marilyn Martin tells us
that the curators and contributors to the catalogue “have approached
the subject of re-contextualization of beadwork as objects of art”,
I feel that, considering the venue, this subject could have been
more fully explored. Except for a brief discussion of this topic by
Emma Bedford in her contribution “Exploring meanings and identities:
beadwork from the eastern Cape in the South African National
Gallery”, only Patricia Davison, in her article “Adornment as art:
an ethnographic perspective”, actually talks about beadwork in terms
of art. Not one contributor discusses actual objects on display from
an aesthetic viewpoint. Davison draws our attention to the recent
blurring of boundaries, both between disciplines within the
humanities and in the distinction between art and artefact and notes
that such boundaries are fluid and open to change. However, she
perceptively points out that “The pertinent question...is not
whether beadwork is ‘Art’ with a capital ‘A’; (the concept of ‘high
art’ being limited historically and culturally to post-Renaissance
and its areas of influence) but why it has become politic in the
1990s for the SANG to define and present southern African beadwork
as art.” In attempting to answer this question she points out that
the SANG needs to be accountable to the community it serves and that
“In a multicultural society...a national gallery could be expected
to represent the works of art of all sectors of society.” But by
following this shift in policy and acquiring and exhibiting African
beadwork “the SANG is making more than an aesthetic statement, it is
conveying a current ideological position.” She then points out
several of the pitfalls of treating beaded apparel as art and comes
to the conclusion that “simply including African art in the
collections of the SANG does not make the gallery less Eurocentric.”
Other authors in the catalogue approach the beadwork from various
angles. Lindsay Hooper’s article “The social life of beads:
expressive uses of beadwork in the eastern Cape” is an informative
examination of the social significance of beadwork among the
southern Nguni. She explains how beadwork is used to distinguish
between gender and age groups, to protect individuals in vulnerable
[p. 105]
situations such as nursing mothers, to denote ethnic affiliation, to
display wealth or political status, and ritually by diviners.
Finally, she points out that ‘While some people have chosen to wear
‘traditional’ beadwork to express particular identity, others firmly
rejected it as a symbol of ‘tribalism’ despised as non-progressive
or because of its manipulation by politicians. Both the acceptance
or rejection seem to emphasize the importance of beadwork in
communicating information about the wearer.”
Acceptance or rejection of wearing beadwork, particularly with
political motivation in mind, is well covered in “Through the barrel
of a bead: the personal and the political in the beadwork of the
Eastern Cape” by André Proctor and Sandra Klopper. They also discuss
the social significance of beads and beadwork as well as changes in
their meanings and uses from the mid-l9th to the late 20th
centuries. The historical background of the bead trade in the
Eastern Cape is covered by Carol Kaufmann in ‘The bead rush:
development of the nineteenth-century bead trade from Cape Town to
King Williams Town’. Delving back even further, Sharma Saitowitz
contributes an informative brief history of glass bead manufacture
and trade from their origins through to the present day in “Towards
a history of glass beads”.
Although one of the stated aims of the exhibition was to encourage
interest and participation in the museum from a broader, more
culturally diverse audience, the catalogue has not been conceived
with this in mind. Although informative and well written, articles
such as Sandra Klopper’s ‘Women’s work, or engendering the art of
beadwork in southern Africa” are not easily accessible to
individuals who have not been steeped in the academic dialogue
surrounding this material. In fact one wonders why the organizers
did not see fit to ask Stephen Long (who was profusely thanked by
almost everyone involved in the exhibition and the catalogue) to
write an article about the very objects that were on display. He
might also have been asked to conduct in-depth interviews with some
of the women who actually make and use the beadwork. Such interviews
would surely have been more informative than the pleasant but rather
insubstantial letters from various Xhosa speakers (most of whom
admitted they know little about beadwork).
Ezakwantu - Beadwork from the
Eastern Cape - Page 8
Perhaps these ideas about the content of the catalogue are personal
biases but the main problems lie in occasional lack of adequate
research. The first difficulty arises in Emma Bedford’s article
“Exploring meanings and identities: beadwork from the eastern Cape
in the South African National Gallery”. She postulates that
Victorian fashions influenced the dress of southern Nguni women.
This certainly seems to be the case when one considers the changes
in headgear and general dress form that took place, but it is a bit
tenuous in her comparison of a blanket pin and a piece of Victorian
beadwork. On close examination, the only thing the two pieces have
in common is the fringe and that is the simplest and most universal
use of beads after merely threading them on a string. If European
influence had been important one would expect to find loom work and
crochet work (beading techniques used by the Victorians) in southern
Nguni beadwork, but neither ever occurs in any southern African
beadwork.
Bedford also states that “Regional proximity between cultural groups
seems to have over-ridden ethnic differences in the production of
remarkably similar beadwork amongst Sotho-speakers from Lesotho and
Xhosa-speakers from the Herschel district (Plate 2).” Although there
are indeed many examples of cross cultural influence across ethnic
lines, she has chosen dubious examples to demonstrate the point. The
three blanket pins pictured in Plate 2 have been labelled ‘Mfengu’,
‘probably South Sotho’ and ‘mixed southern and northern Nguni and
Sotho’. In fact, all three pieces are likely South Sotho based on
their form, designs, beading techniques, colours and materials used.
Cat. 280 is a bit unusual in its use of molded blue beads and Cat.
281 in the use of what appear to be glass bead imitations of ‘lucky’
beads or beans (red seeds used extensively and almost exclusively by
the South Sotho). The designations given these two pieces are also
speculative. Cat. 281 is from the D.R. Macfarlane bequest to the
South African Museum. Although the index card on file at the museum
does mention Mfengu, that designation has been added to the card in
pencil in the margin by an unknown contributor (personal
communication with Lindsay Hooper). The master register does not
mention Mfengu but only states that the pieces were collected on the
coast east of East London. Cat. 280 is from the Clem Webb collection
at the Africana Museum and even though Kaufmann wishfully assumes
that it is well documented (p. 51), there is in fact almost no
information to accompany the collection. It came into the museum in
two lots, the first was labelled native and the second ‘Zulu’
(personal communication with Ann Wanless). Bedford’s reference above
to the “...Xhosa speakers from the Herschel district...” is
puzzling. None of the pieces in Plate 2 is attributed to the
Herschel district and in any case the area was populated mainly by
Hlubi with Sotho and Thembu in lesser numbers (Van Warmelo 1935:62,
66, 99).
The other difficulties appear in Gary Van Wyk’s contribution.
‘Drawing the bead on blacks: eastern Cape people painted by Baines,
shot by Pocock”. In complaining that early artists brought their
biases into their works, Van Wyk is perhaps forgetting that he is
doing the same by applying today’s sensibilities and morals to
yesterday’s culture. He must realize that although today most of us
would find Baines’ explanation of what he would do if he encountered
an elephant (“shoot him, if I can, and, if not, sketch him”)
distasteful at least. Baines’ response was at the time perfectly
normal and acceptable. Similarly, although Baines and other painters
of the period tended to idealize landscapes (being able to sell
their work was surely important to them), it seems a bit extreme to
accuse him of performing “...a kind of violence by manipulating the
landscape...”
Although aggressively phrased, it is probably fair for Van Wyk to
say that “In the paintings on exhibition (Plates 10 & 11), Baines
presents us with mythical views of ‘Amakosa’ subjects in cultural
isolation: ‘noble savages’ before ‘contamination’ by the West, in
apparent harmony with nature.” It isn’t entirely honest to follow
with “Rather than point to the bloody and deadly process of colonial
conquest on the Cape’s frontiers in which he himself was involved…”
since Baines had nothing to do with the selection of pictures for
this exhibition and he did paint and sketch dozens of bloody battle
scenes from the frontier wars.
Van Wyk correctly points out many potentially suspicious details in
the beadwork depicted by Baines in the paintings on exhibit, but he
should be perhaps more careful in drawing conclusions. Although he
is probably correct in questioning a corn bearer wearing ceremonial
anklets (which seem to have been worn by women only during a part of
their wedding ceremony [Bigalke 1972]), his statement that these
anklets were “conventionally black and white at the same time” is
not entirely borne out by the evidence. Many were blue and white,
but more significantly the Museum of Mankind in London has one
(number Af,+.1495) which is made up of black, white and red beads.
Also, Van Wyk’s claim that the large red beads (seen on the
[p. 106 ]
necklaces of the women in both plates) are not present in museum
collections is not true. They are fairly common in museums in Europe
and the United States and are not Idar-Oberstein stone but glass:
sometimes transparent and at other times red glass wrapped on white
or yellow cores. The assertion that the ornamental strip on the back
of the cloak of the woman in Plate 11 “... is also over decorated by
Baines with brass buttons, the height of embellishment among the
wealthy being three rows of buttons” is not supported by available
evidence. A.F. Gardiner, in his Narrative of a Journey to the Zoolu
County (1836:101), shows the back of an ‘Amatembu’ woman whose cloak
strip has four rows of brass buttons and that of the woman in F.T.
L’Ons’ painting ‘Kosani or Kafir Jack 1846’ at the Africana Museum
has five rows. In case these are also exaggerations by the artists,
one can actually view a cape strip with six rows of buttons on
display in the Saffron Walden Museum (Ln C 2372) in England.
Ezakwantu - Beadwork from the
Eastern Cape - Page34
Similar problems arise in Van Wyk’s discussion of Pocock’s
photographs. Again, his central premise that past representations
must be employed with caution if they are to be taken seriously as
historical fact” is disputable. Many early photographers posed,
dressed and labelled their subjects with little or no concern for
veracity or the dignity of their subjects. But restraint and
thorough knowledge must be used when pointing out discrepancies. Van
Wyk notes that the woman in fig. 36 is wearing an ivory arm band
which “was reserved for the exclusive use of men of high status
(Shaw and Van Warmelo 1988:658-660). He failed to note, however,
that on p. 660 Shaw and Van Warmelo state “... that there were two
sorts of ivory arm- band - the thick heavy ring worn only by chiefs
and distinguished men of the Xhosa, Thembu and Bomvana, and a
thinner ring that had no special significance and might be worn by
any man or, according to three sources, women, who were able to
afford it.” Furthermore, p. 17 of the Woodward Album at the Africana
Museum contains a photo taken in about 1888 of a Xhosa woman wearing
an ivory arm band. This obviously doesn’t prove that the
photographers of these arm-band wearing women didn’t provide the
bands as props, but one must be aware of the possibility that they
did indeed belong to the subjects. Being over-zealous in
scrutinizing early pictorial material doesn’t necessarily lead one
closer to the truth. It also seems that the progress of a rational
argument isn’t well served through the liberal use of loaded words
such as ‘plunder’, ‘obsessive’ and ‘mania’.
Overall the catalogue has informative and interesting articles. Some
of the material has been published before in various media but
anyone interested in the history and politics of beadwork or the way
in which the current political atmosphere is causing institutions
such as the SANG to reexamine their policies, would enjoy reading
this catalogue.
References
Bigalke, E.H. 1972. Dress, personal decoration and ornament among
the Ndlambe. Annals of the Cape Provincial Museum 9:65-90.
Gardiner, A.F. 1836. Narrative of a journey to the Zoolu country in
South Africa, undertaken in 1835. London: William Crofts.
Kennedy, R.F. (compiler) 1967. Johannesburg Africana Museum
Catalogue of Pictures vol. 3.
Kennedy, R.F. (compiler) 1975. Africana Museum Catalogue of Prints
vol. 1.
Shaw, EM. & Van Warmelo, N.J. 1988. The material culture of the Cape
Nguni. Part 4: Personal and general.
Annals of the South African Museum 5 8:447-949.
Van Warmelo, N.J. 1935. A preliminary survey of the Bantu tribes of
South Africa. Department of Native Affairs: Ethnological
Publications vol. 5.
Ezakwantu - Beadwork from the
Eastern Cape - Page 28 & 75
Price: $300.00
plus postage.
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