Atta Kwami

Suggestion for Black Friday—avoid it altogether and head over to the Howard Scott Gallery in Chelsea. There you will be surrounded by the color-saturated, light-infused work of Ghanaian artist Atta Kwami.

The banded patches of color that instantly suggest kente cloth (Kwami’s mother was an artist and textile designer), also suggest the architecture, sign painting and music of Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, where the artist lives, works, and teaches. And like any intricately chaotic, yet purposeful city, the best way to navigate the paintings is to wander through them and even get lost while savoring the variety of brushwork and imagery.

I was lucky enough to meet the artist, and was surprised to learn that many of the pieces in the show were painted in London, and in Washington D.C. during a recent fellowship. Kwami emanates a natural warmth, and when I asked how he could produce these extraordinarily colorful canvasses in such gray places, his answer that “the light comes from within,” was absolutely real and made perfect sense.

With light and peace on this Thanksgiving day …

The show is called Fufofo (Coming Together) and runs
through November 27.

Dzigbordi

Sanku

Dzidefo

Lanier Place Goddess II

African Portrait Cloth

Kanga, (East Africa), or pagne, (West and Central Africa) are the roughly 5 ft. long, rectangular, printed textiles used for everything from wrapping one’s head to carrying a baby. The pictorial fabric, which also traditionally include text, are often printed to commemorate a specific event--funeral, political campaign, visit by a world leader—in which case one or multiple portraits are incorporated into the design.

Long Live the President! Portrait Cloths from Africa, at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, has over 100 examples on display to August 29, 2010. To learn more about these cloths that are such an important part of African textile culture, visit Adire African Textiles online. There, you can view much of the collection from which many of the exhibit's pieces are on loan. Find additional information about kanga here, here, and here.

"Amitié Franco Gabonaise," “Franco-Gabonese friendship,” is printed beneath portraits of President Georges Pompidou and President Omar Bongo on the occasion of Pompidou’s visit to Gabon in February 1971.



Ahmadou Ahidjo, President of Cameroun, 1960-1982.
Two cloths: top, circa 1963, bottom, circa 1970.


Abdoul Diouf , President of Senegal, 1981-2000.
Cloth is from the election year, 1983.


Albert-Bernard Omar Bongo, President of Gabon for 42 years,
1967-2009, when he died in office. Cloth dates from 1971.


Funerary cloth for Marien N'gouabi, President of
Congo (Brazzaville) from 1969 to 1977.


Francois Tombalbaye, President of Chad
from 1960 to 1975. Cloth is circa 1970.


Leopold Sedar Senghor, President of Senegal, 1960-80.
Cloth marked his 90th birthday in 1996.


Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Zaire, 1965-97.
Cloth is circa 1992.


25th anniversary of the death of Thomas Moulero, 1888-1975,
first priest of Dahomey (Benin), 2000.

Nelson Mandela, South Africa, in 2001.

Michael Jackson, Tanzania, 2009.

Pope John Paul II's visit to Benin in 1993

Masai women wearing Barack Obama kanga, 2009.


Kanga for Bush's visit to Tanzania in 2008. (via D.C. Diary)

Photos from Tropenmuseum and Adire African Textiles.