Got Wire?
· Woven cultural patterns. ·
The wires in my head got all crossed. So many different associations triggered by the sight of swallows congregating on steel cables, perhaps getting ready to leave for warmer climes.
There was the train of thought associated with one of my favorite childhood fairy tales, Thumbelina by H.C. Andersen, the story of a tiny girl conceived through magic. Many a critter plays a role in this story, toad kidnappers, mouse guardians, mole suitors, and last but not least a swallow, coming to the rescue of our thumb-sized heroine who bravely survives attempts at forced marriage to a furry creature. Eventually, heartlessly, she dumps the infatuated swallow in favor of a flower-fairy prince. Growing wings herself, she happily-ever -after bumbles with him from blossom to blossom.
Oh, being picked up by a swallow and released in Africa – this then imaginative German girl could think of nothing more exciting! (Swallows from Northern Europe did indeed migrate to that continent.) Finding a prince and no longer being an outcast almost felt like an after-thought, but one that raised some pleasant goose bumps nonetheless. It seemed like a story capturing my own sense of being different during childhood, and one of isolation overcome, and also one of agency – the girl did things, however secretly, that suited her, and had the gut to disobey instructions.
Second train of thought fastened on a different tale of surviving isolation, this one decidedly for adults, and literate ones at that, since it revolves around allusions to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and many other literary characters of the Western canon. Jane Gardam (the book blurb correctly proclaims her Britain’s best writer you have never heard of – certainly true for this reader) weaves a spell around another outcast girl raised in rather lonely circumstances, finding an anchor in the willpower of Defoe’s stranded protagonist when she seemingly has none of her own. Crusoe’s Daughter (1985) is a small book, describing nuances of psychological interiors of people caught in or between two world wars in Britain, faith lost and found, and love becoming an afterthought to purpose. It, too, describes the solipsistic power of a woman who defies instructions, social mores and in her case the demands immanent to the last gasps of a struggling empire. An old-fashioned, comforting book, on one level. One that slyly sinks into your brain to make you face some hard truths that you tried to forget and that ultimately shifts to a novel structure of narrative, on another level.
Third train of thought revolved around the fact that age, experience and education really do provide perspectives that were previously missing. Take Anderson’s tale, for example, read for adventure and romance then, and understood now as an attempt of retelling even older tales – Persephone’s travels through the underworld and her reemergence come to mind. There is something of a Christian underpinning as well, the acceptance of the lepers and the grotesque, every outcast being worthy of a happy ending. But his narrative was also a moralistic warning: stick with your own own – hierarchical worlds of upper and lower classes or races (the dark, the brown, stay underground… ) should not mix.
Which brings us to the final train of thought elicited by all those birds on a wire. One of the most exciting discovery of recent months for me was a young South African artist, Igshaan Adams, who is not only a spectacular observer of his environment and a committed bridge-builder between divided groups, but a creative visionary when it comes to weaving wires. His first solo show in the UK, Kicking Dust has recently closed at London’s Hayward Gallery, for me, of course, only digitally available (photos from their website.)
It displayed tapestry and three dimensional installations that allowed you to walk paths between them. The artist was raised in Bonteheuwel, a former segregated township in Cape Town, and his work draws on the country’s history of Apartheid, as well as the behavioral patterns of its inhabitants – whether defined by poverty, customs, segregation or indigenous tradition.
In other words, here is an artist who is willing to witness what defines his environment, able to see the patterns that are laid down, and willing to reach across divides by creating representations full of connections (rather than stay rigidly with one’s own like H.C.Andersen would have us.) He does this with a tool kit of wires, ropes and twine, beads, trinkets and household dyes, all materials easily available at your neighborhood hardware store, with neighbors and family members helping with the weaving process.
The large installation represents the mapped spaces of different townships, connected by “footpaths” that were spontaneously trod by people from diverse, often hostile neighborhoods. The latter were created by an actively segregating government that did not wish to see solidarity between and politically aggregated power among the different ethnic groups – the Khoikhoi, Basters, Xhosa, Tswana, Cape Malays and Indian South Africans. Above the lines of these paths are representations of dust clouds – configurations that pick up the forms of clouds that are made when people performing indigenous dances kick sand.
“One of the oldest indigenous dancing styles in southern Africa, the Riel is traditionally performed by the San (also known as Bushmen), Nama and Khoi people of South Africa. Adams’ grandparents are Nama and as a child he would often join them to see young people dance the Rieldans in rural villages in the Northern Cape. Described as ‘dancing in the dust’, the dance is a courtship ritual where clouds of dust erupt from the ground as performers energetically kick the dry ground.”
You can see the dance and the artist’s explanation here. It’s short and worthwhile!
A state-bound exhibition of his tapestries,Veld Ven, depicting the selectively worn-out linoleum of his township neighbors’ floors, just closed at New York City’s Casey Caplan Gallery.
Here is a good visual overview of the individual tapestries and arrangements, photographed by Jason Wyche. Looking at the photographs, I found the patterns reminiscent of good translation, with all the hard work to capture the essentials in both content and form barely visible beneath the impression of likeness and flow. Then again, he could also be called a kind of cartographer, mapping movement onto two-dimensional patterns, serenely sharing presence and absence of design. Below are samples of the work.
Maybe migration paths of swallows next? Connecting continents without a speck of xenophobia?
Music today is a bit on the romantic side – so be it.
