https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0797-9533
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Abstract
South African institutions were slow to acquire artworks by black women. When they did, among the first were tapestries from a Swedish art center at Rorke’s Drift in rural South Africa. However, it remains unknown that many works by these marginalized African women had entered Swedish collections before then, showing in acclaimed exhibitions such as Woven in Africa, which opened at Röhsska Museum of Design and Craft in Göteborg in 1965. Despite the proportions of this export undertaking, and the valorizing of Sweden in the reinvention of African culture, little is remembered of these “stranded” works or the subjectivities that informed them. The recent showing in 2021–2022 of Röhsska’s Rorke’s Drift tapestries on Migration—The Journey of Objects provides a context for interrogating past curatorial practices related to these works. Revealing how the meanings of these migrating tapestries shifted over time, this article also shows that their vicissitudes were also ordained in the conception of the Rorke’s Drift project. Using a post-development methodology, the author unsettles erstwhile notions of cultural philanthropy, showing how the venture advanced the interests of its planners in Stockholm, and how these problematically-connoted tapestries reflect the hegemonies of both apartheid and mid-century Swedish “development.”
Acknowledgments
This essay is partly based on the findings of my PhD thesis, “Ideology, imagery and female agency in tapestry at the Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre, Rorke’s Drift, during the Swedish period 1961–1976” (2019). However, it was more specifically informed by my recent collaboration with Röhsska Museum of Design and Craft in Göteborg, Sweden, on the project Migration—The Journey of Objects 2021–2022, for which I provided a contribution to the exhibition publication and a video presentation. My thanks go to Röhsska for this fruitful collaboration. I gratefully acknowledge permission to reproduce copyright material in this article.
Disclosure Statement
I warrant that there is no conflict of interest regarding my submission.
Notes
1 Having been completed in late 1966, it showed at Gallery 101 in Johannesburg, appearing in Bantu in January 1967. It was exhibited once more in 1976, at the Brooklyn Museum and Public Library in New York.
2 For an illustrated analysis of the development of the project pedagogy, see Hobbs, “Evolving a Tapestry Practice at Rorke’s Drift: Women’s Alliances, Agencies and Visual Syntaxes in the Loom” (2020).
3 The Centre’s production increased steadily, with 396 woven items completed in 1965 alone. Of these, 60 are listed as “tapestries”, rather than rugs, carpets and wall-hangings.
4 This was at the prompting of Åke Huldt, director of Konstfack, according to Minutes of the Meeting of the Svenska kommittén för stöd åt afrikanskt konsthantverk, Stockholm, Sweden, June 17, 1964.
5 Migration – the Journey of Objects comprised over 200 objects of varying historical, cultural and geographic origins. Among them were a range of textiles, such as sixteenth-century Belgian tapestries, Kuba raffia cloths from Democratic Republic of Congo, nineteenth-century Navajo blankets, Mayan textiles, ancient woven fragments from Yemen and Egypt, eighteenth-century figurative cushion covers from Skåne in Sweden, and war rugs from Afganistan.
6 Co-incidentally, one such Swedish collector was Rev. Otto Witt, who founded the Swedish mission at Rorke’s Drift in 1878. Sent to South Africa by the Church of Sweden Mission, he secured this tract of 5,000 acres on the Natal side of the Buffalo river, erecting its first stone buildings here.
7 Svenska kommittén för stöd åt afrikanskt konsthantverk [The Swedish Committee for the Support of African Art and Craft], was founded by artist Berta Hansson in 1961. Members included, inter alia, Signe Höjer, Jytte Bonnier and Åke Huldt.
8 For a detailed reading see Hobbs, “Ideology, imagery and female agency in tapestry at the Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre, Rorke’s Drift, during the Swedish period 1961–1976” (2019).
9 Dammann, Eammah. Interview with the author, Amoibe, October 9, 2015.
10 Unless stipulated otherwise, all my interviews with Peder Gowenius cited in this article took place on June 2–8, 2016, June 7–8, 2018, and April 24, 2017.
11 A date of 1964 appears in Röhsska’s files. This was probably their commencement date, as records and letters suggest they were completed just before the exhibition opened in 1965.
12 See their fuller statement, as well as images of the exhibition, on ‘Migration – The journey of objects’ at https://rohsska.se/en/migration/ Accessed: October 3, 2022.
13 In “Vettig u-hjälp visas i Göteborg: Terapeuter utbildas av Svenskar” [Judicious development aid is shown in Göteborg: Therapists educated by Swedes] in Sydsvenska Dagbladet, March 8, 1965.
14 The women had been sent to Sweden on study grants the Committee raised from organisations such as the Hesselgren Fund.
15 In “Cornelia”, “Bön om ull blev slaktat får” [Prayer for wool became slaughtered sheep]. Undated and unidentified clipping, Citation1965.
16 After some years, weavers would voice their dissatisfaction with this convention, as Philda Majozi and Lyness Magwaza recounted in our interview at Rorke’s Drift on October 30, 2015.
17 An exception was Dirkie Offringa, whose efforts were nevertheless curtailed by the Centre, as she recounts in her Masters dissertation (Offringa Citation1988, 2–3).
18 There were of course exceptions, such as Smålands Museum, where weavers’ names and title of their tapestry The Story of Shembe are on record, as well as an account of the imagery—though not necessary as shared by the weavers themselves. Like the tapestry itself, this traveling account journeyed from Rorke’s Drift to the Committee, to the National museum, to the Swedbank collection, then to Smålands Museum in Växjö.
19 Magwaza, Lyness. Interview with the author, Rorke’s Drift, October 8, 2015.
20 At least three of the works on Woven in Natal were evolved in this way, though some joined the exhibition tour only later.
21 These oral accounts often tell of a mother who discovers that her children been devoured by a beast. She subsequently slices it open and frees the people and animals trapped within. For an old example see Lydia Umkasetemba’s version, as transcribed by Henry Callaway in Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus (Citation1886, 331–35).
22 In Neville Dubow, “Remarkable show of African mission weaving,” Cape Times, July 7, Citation1967.
23 However, although Dlamini has been credited as the weaver of this work, a March 1966 entry, “Jesus going to Golgotha to be crucified”, in the Centre’s weaving-production record book for Citation1965–1966 lists Josephine Memele and Dlamini as co-weavers.
24 A detailed discussion of this work is available in Hobbs (Citation2019, 118–20).
25 This tapestry is variously referred to as Trädet, De blå träden and Blå träden in Swedish exhibition literature. No title is given in the production records, where it seems to have been entered on June 15, 1965. I have provisionally assigned it an English title, The blue trees.
26 Gowenius also recounted this conversation to me in our interview in Växjö, Sweden, on June 7, 2018. However, he had not remembered that The blue trees was its outcome of it.
27 I learned the probable identities of these weavers and the exchanges from which they developed The blue trees from an account in a missionary periodical by Anders Joëlson (Citation1972, 3-4). This coincides with Gowenius’s own version, in which he refers to Mtzali by her isiZulu name, “Gugulethu” (Gowenius Citation2002, 44).
28 Although ACAs studied a range of subjects, they also learned tapestry weaving. Their subjects included textile printing, ceramics, art and design, theatre and on occasion leatherwork and beadwork. Theoretical studies included art history, bookkeeping and hospital therapy, the latter taught by hospital personnel.
29 Among the differences between these two initiatives in Africa is that Harrania, established a few years prior to Rorke’s Drift, was conceived and managed by Egyptians themselves, while its beneficiaries were children from poor families, albeit they had received more formal schooling. On the other hand, Rorke’s Drift was a Swedish initiative founded in a hostile apartheid environment in a distant country, whose beneficiaries had received very little formal education. As the Centre’s teachers and artists were often harassed by the authorities, its isolationist stance towards the host country inevitably deepened over time.
30 The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce copyright material in this article. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders, but if any copyright infringements have occurred, she would appreciate information that would enable any omissions or errors to be corrected.
31 Joanna Corden, Royal Society, email exchange with the author, London, February 3 – March 4, Citation2016. An image of this tapestry appears in my earlier article in Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture, “Evolving a Tapestry Practice at Rorke’s Drift: Women’s Alliances, Agencies and Visual Syntaxes in the Loom” (2020).
32 For an illustrated reading of The Creation see Hobbs (Citation2020, 27–9).
33 Gowenius, Peder. Interview with the author, Växjö, Sweden, April 24, 2017.
34 In time other ventures would be initiated in southern Africa, but through the efforts of the Goweniuses and Allina Ndebele. See Hobbs “Tapestry, ideology and counter voices in Southern Africa during apartheid” (Citation2022).
35 In 1965 NIB was renamed the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA).
36 Minutes of the Meeting of the Svenska kommittén för stöd åt afrikanskt konsthantverk, Stockholm, Sweden, March 28, 1962. It was prohibited from funding the Centre outright, as South Africa had not itself sought this aid. Nevertheless, SIDA would unexpectedly fund the expansion of the Centre’s buildings in 1965.
37 The ACC was a non-profit venture of the South African Institute of Race Relations.
38 These included, for example, Philda Majozi’s large work, In Olden Days (Long Ago We Had Many Animals) (1967).
39 Arnott, Bruce. Letter to Bishop Helge Fosseus, Cape Town, May 27, Citation1968.
40 In “Afrikansk färgglöd” [Glowing African colours], Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, March 13, 1965.
41 Exceptions to this are The story of Shembe (1968) by Ester Nxumalo, Philda Majozi (and possibly Victoria Mncube), which was recently restored at Smålands Museum in Växjö, Sweden.
42 Zwane, Beatrice and Ester Ndebele. Interview with the author, Amoibe, November 10, 2016. Under Union rule in South Africa the Natives Land Act (Act 27 of 1913) set aside a mere 7.3 percent of land for the “Native” population. At a stroke, Africans were disposed of their land beyond these “reserves”, this draconian measure forcing nearly a million people into serfdom or itinerancy.
43 Zwane, Beatrice and Ester Ndebele. Interview with the author, Amoibe, November 10, 2016.
44 The necessity of sales was not unique to Rorke’s Drift of course. As Klein (Citation2014, 1352) points out, the choice to become an artist in South Africa led to existential problems, especially in the case of black artists. What was different in the case of Rorke’s Drift, however, was the transfer of the tapestries to a foreign market in exchange for a monthly salary and bonuses for exceptional works.
45 Ironically, the Committee’s first chairperson, Signe Höjer, had been one of the champions of the consumer boycott of South African goods. See, for example, Sellström (Citation1999, 156-59).
46 While it is true that women such as Allina Ndebele and Jessie Dlamini would rise to senior positions in the workshops and representation at Board meetings, after 1976 the Centre’s Swedish management was replaced by other Europeans, variously American, Dutch, and (white) South African citizens. Malin Lundbohm returned to the Centre on SIDA funding in 1981–82. Swedes Göran Skoglund and his wife took up leadership posts here in 1985 and were still running it in 1987. Moreover, white South Africans such as Jo Thorpe, Ian Redelinghuys and Walter Battiss continued to serve on the Centre’s Board for some years.
47 Ndebele, Allina. Interview with the author, Swart Mfolozi, April 2014, 18–19. In her exhibition review, “En vävd länk utan exoticism” [A woven link without exoticism], presumably published before the show was forcibly closed, Maija Niittymäki (Citation1987) avoided mentioning that Ndebele was a South African.
48 For a detailed account of her role at this early stage see Hobbs (Citation2019, 85–91).
49 Ndebele, Allina. Interview with the author, Swart Mfolozi, April 18, 2014.
50 A more comprehensive account of the representation of these works is available in Hobbs (Citation2019, 5–9).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Philippa Hobbs
South African art historian Philippa Hobbs has researched marginalized artists and art forms during the apartheid period since 1995, publishing, among others, Printmaking in a Transforming South Africa (1997), Rorke’s Drift: Empowering Prints (2003) and Listening to Distant Thunder: The Art of Peter Clarke (2011) (co-authored with Elizabeth Rankin). Her recent publications have focused largely on ideologies and agencies in the tapestries made at Swedish art centers in southern Africa, most notably Rorke’s Drift, in the 1960s and 1970s. Hobbs is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the South African Research Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture, University of Johannesburg. [email protected]