Felting and Feeling

Felting is one of man’s oldest technologies: matting plant fibres and or animal hairs made a fabric which wrapped our bodies from the elements. Felt blankets are the descendants of this early invention. In South Africa felt blankets played and continues to play a role in clothing and fashion, and thus in identity. This exhibition looks at 5 historic and contemporary examples of South African blankets in art and design. 

Whilst South African men of the Xhosa tribe may still wear blankets as part of their initiation ceremony, a more modern way to wear blankets is offered by the fashion designer Thabo Makheta, for instance, who uses them to make tailored jackets.

Using blankets as a tool of political agency is still present today.  In another exhibition we highlight the works of five contemporary artists who use textiles to interrogate society and identity, in this exhibition we highlight a work by the art collective the Keiskamma Art Projects  (or “KAP” for short).In 2010, KAP made an assemblage using fabrics and other materials to create “Keiskamma Guernica”.  It was modeled after Picasso’s “Guernica” and is the same dimension (3.5 metres high and 7.8 metres wide).  Picasso’s “Guernica”, made in 1937, was a cry of horror over the bombing of the small Basque town Guernica by the Nazis with the consent of the fascist General Franco during the Spanish Civil War. 

THE KAP’s “GUERNICA” WAS ALSO A CRY OF HORROR, OVER THE DECIMATION CAUSED BY HIV/AIDS. KAP members live in a small village called Hamburg and in  surrounding villages.  In 2007, the Hamburg health clinic was closed due to what turned out to be misguided public health policy.  Patients were directed to a clinic in a larger village and to a hospital 106 kms away.  This is a formidable challenge to a community who own few cars and have very little income for public transport.  In effect, closing the local clinic was tantamount to closing health access for some.Like the folk bombed in their Spanish town, the Hamburg villagers felt lack of agency, their lives impacted by political decisions outside of their experience let alone ability to change. 

As KAP put it in their press release, making the “Keiskamma Guernica” is a “LAMENT FOR THE DEAD, for the injustices of our health system and the staggering grief experienced in Eastern Cape [province] villages today” (footnote 4).

South Africa is still a young democracy, it was only 1994 when Nelson Mandela was elected president.  The past is omnipresent in the country’s struggle to find its identity.  Some issues remain contested and charged. Some times the past and present are able to be woven into something beautiful.

Mungo is a blanket company based in Plettenburg Bay (along the so-called Garden Route).  The previous clip is from one of their looms which is over 100 years old and still used to make blankets.  The loom was imported from England when blankets came to be made in, not just imported into, South Africa. Alongside such looms, Mungo also uses state-of-the-art automated weaving machines.  

The title of this exhibition because the art and designs exhibited give us a sense of South African identity and the prospect of what may be shared with the rest of the world. In the accompanying exhibition "it's not a mistake - it's something else" looks at the material felt and what came out of the collaborative Social Fabric on felt with artist Paul Edmunds, felt furnishings company Krafthaus, and the designers who participated in the workshop.