Designs from Bombe Surprise, using Kente cloth from West Africa. We don't know what it stands for, but it looks good.
There is a fantastic relationship between tradition and
creativity in African textile arts. The firm beliefs on which the aesthetic is
built maintains tradition, whilst social, economic and historical changes pave
the way for those traditions to be developed and passed on through time. I
think that this understanding can be applied to other forms of art in Africa,
and what I have learned about particular cultures and the way they use what
they make has certainly broken down my own built-in stereotypes of what ‘African
Art’ is and can be. The context in which African textiles exist can be used a a means of weaving together the
aesthetic products of separate processes, resulting in an overall, totally
linked understanding of tradition and creativity within the history of African
material.
