Journeys into Textile and Identity

More so than many other countries, perhaps, identity in South Africa has been prescribed. From the mid-nineteenth century until 1994, oppressive systems – first colonialism and then Apartheid – dictated how people should live their lives, regulating everything from enfranchisement to employment opportunities. Because these regulations were centred on the body, and specifically the control of black bodies by white, dress became one of the many arenas subject to governance. After all, our clothes are what we use to express a point of view, to assert an identity, to signal an allegiance and to exhibit cultural pride.  For the five contemporary South African artists in this virtual exhibition, textiles have enormous power. Working across a range of media, each adopts a unique approach to fabric or to fashion. Some focus on raw materials and on production, while others turn to the theatrical language of costume and the claims that can be made about identity through clothes. What they share is a rich understanding of the historic, social and political currency of garments in South Africa and beyond, and the many ways in which textiles can be put to transformative ends. 

Igshaan Adams’ enigmatic work is often hard to pin-down, as its subject matter and its medium are in-betweens. Formally, many of his pieces exist between textile and sculpture, while the work draws meaning from the push-and-pull of conflicting identities – Adams’ own experience as a liberal-minded Muslim raised in his Christian grandparents’ home, as a coloured South African and as queer– to explore the tensions that arise from a hybrid position in the world.

Nicholas Hlobo also thinks of identity as fabric, assembled from bits and pieces of found material and tenuously held together by thread. As the artist explains, building a self – and with it a relationship to family, community and society – requires addition, subtraction and stitches: “Trying to find your identity is about cutting things off and bringing them back; sometimes you don’t know what you want to keep.” His experimental use of materials, and particularly the stark juxtaposition of rubber and ribbon, is a metaphor for this process of self-fashioning. Black rubber, coded as masculine, and ribbon, symbolically feminine, sit uneasily side by side, allowing the artist to prompt conversations around the messy, makeshift patchwork of gender, race and sexuality. 

While it may not orient around fashion, Pierre Fouché’s "His Foam White Arms Go Over and Round Me" is certainly about the personal significance we invest in textiles. This 6.4 meter long lace scroll reproduces the trident-shaped pattern of a frilled shark’s teeth. These fish, once known as sea serpents, lure prey into the depths with the blinding whiteness of their smile. Responding to that deadly smile, Fouché has mapped out a complex band of bobbin lace in cool greys, blues and whites. 

We are what came before but we are also what we hope to be.  Through signifiers, such as artworks and fashion, we set goals for ourselves and announce our intentions to the world. The effort, the achievements, and the failures are the journey of reaching for our goals. In the accompanying exhibition "Take a thread for a walk", see Pierre Fouche's work as artist-in-residence at sock manufacturer FALKE SA.