Exit the obvious wax. At a time when the Dutch fabric is of all trends and undergoes the throes of globalization, the International Festival of Extraordinary Textiles (FITE) takes a completely different side. That of promoting an ancestral African textile creation alongside creations from around the world. No less than 80 artists thus revisit their heritage in a burst of modernity. “We are interested in the rural world, with a connection to the field.
The idea is to showcase what everyone can wear, ”claims Christine Bouillon, director of the Bargoin museum in Clermont-Ferrand and co-curator of the exhibition “Love etc. “. A course that a handful of lucky people were able to discover, a helmet screwed on the ears, a few weeks before the museums close due to the pandemic linked to Covid-19.
An exhibition that will be exported to Dakar in a symphony of openness to the world
Extended until April 2021 in the hope of welcoming the public again, this meeting will be exported, in another form, to Dakar next November under the aegis of Hamady Bocoum, director of the Museum of Black Civilizations, and Mr. Malick Ndiaye, curator of the Théodore-Monod museum of African art.
Ready-to-wear creations, tapestries, weavings, beadwork, but also photographs… So many mediums that show the richness of textiles. A material that accompanies people around the world in their journey of life, from religious or spiritual ceremonies to traditional festivals. “There is clearly a desire to decompartmentalize the borders, slips the director. We realize that the same subjects are treated everywhere on the planet, only the reading changes ”.
Far from the exclusively African circuit that contemporary events are used to offering, “Love etc.” »Thus makes correspond, in a perfect scenography, creations coming from Africa as from Europe, from America as from Asia.
From the entrance, the tapestries by Senegalese artists Kalidou Kasse and Pap Badione take up the traditional codes of the genre in an African narration. With “Mummy Chrysalis”, the last pays homage to Cheikh Anta Diop and his work on ancient Egypt as a starting point for African civilizations.
Direction upstairs of the neoclassical building. In a room soberly plunged into darkness, three impressive hangings echo each other. In the center, the textile work embroidered with gold thread, in reference to the outfits worn by brides in Algeria, signed Dalila Dalléas Bouzar. The painter leaves her favorite medium for a tapestry produced in collaboration with embroiderers from the country. Representing the three ages of women, the creation rubs shoulders with those of the American Kiki Smith, who takes up the codes of medieval tapestry in a “hippie” reinterpretation of Adam and Eve. Geographical and temporal borders are well and truly abolished. The theme of the exhibition, love, itself appealing to the universal.
South African Morgan Mhhape questions fatherly love in an installation of woven beads. The young guard of contemporary art, such as the Lova Lova collective installed between Marseille, Paris and Cayenne (French Guiana) – to whom we owe the exhibition poster – redefines queer teenage love in a series of ultra-fashionable photos.
While the work of Carolle Benitah, artist born in Casablanca (Morocco) focuses on the love of family, mourning and the loss of loved ones through a series of embroidered “souvenir” portraits. For his part, the Beninese plastic artist Prince Toffa, is attached to the love of the planet by offering two creations of “upcycled” dresses made from cans of soda and Pure Water sachets, these bags of drinking water sold in African capitals littering the asphalt.
Love, a theme also scrutinized by Joël Andrianomearisoa. The internationally renowned contemporary Madagascan artist has taken over the Roger-Quilliot art museum, a space usually reserved for mainly European works dating from medieval times to the 20th century, during the exhibition “We were so much in love” , also presented as part of the FITE. The museum hopes to be able to reopen its doors to the public, while waiting to export it in an unprecedented format to Dakar next fall.
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