Matri-Archive, Creativity, and Beadwork: Toward an Inclusive Design Process

Abstract

This article focuses on the work of Thuli Princess Sebenzise Khoza, one of over 350 bead artists from a community-based arts and crafts project called Woza Moya, which is located in Hillcrest, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In this article, I use the concepts of the matri-archive, informed largely by Annalisa Piccirillo (2014), and creativity drawn from the work of Vlad Glăveanu (2011) and Glăveanu and Sierra (2015) to analyze the design and creation process for Khoza’s beaded works: the Princess earrings and Christmas tree angels. I use observations, photographs, and interviews taken over an eleven-month period to formulate the description and analysis. This study shows that conceptualization of these beaded works includes Woza Moya’s director, Paula Thomson, and marketer. Analyzing Khoza’s creation process, however, discloses how she retrieves and adapts fragments of matri-archival resources to inform her design process, as well as how she transmits knowledge by including her daughter, niece, and husband in the process. In this article, I argue that an organization such as Woza Moya employs an inclusive design process in which diverse forms of knowledges – such as those drawn from the matri-archive – are given value and appropriately incorporated into product development.

Keywords:

• beadwork
• matri-archive
• creativity
• design process
• community arts
• craft projects

Acknowledgements

The financial assistance of the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, in collaboration with the South African Humanities Deans Association, towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NIHSS and SAHUDA. I wish to thank Thuli Princess Sebenzise Khoza and Paula Thomson for post-Ph.D. conversations when drafting this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Permission was granted to use both Thuli Princess Sebenzise Khoza’s and Paula Thomson’s names and all interviews and observations were conducted after participants consented to participate in the study. Full ethical clearance was given on December 12, 2018, for the Ph.D. study.

2 Although called the Princess earrings during fieldwork and on the Instagram page, in Woza Moya’s online shop they are called donut hoops earrings.

3 Women’s role in the continuity of the beading practice and its use to carry culture, history, and lineage has been discussed in numerous works. Discourse on the application of beadwork within the matrilineal frame includes the context of Tanzania (Mbilinyi 1972), Botswana (Larson 1975), Canada (Anderson 2016), and the DRC (De Coster, Nkayilu and Devlieger 2016). This subject has also been discussed in the KwaZulu-Natal context (Preston-Whyte 1991; van Wyk 2003; Wells et al. 2004; Boram-Hays 2005, 2018; Nettleton 2014; and, more recently, Gatfield 2019).

4 The word oma directly translates to mothers and implies aunts from the matrilineage. If it had been from the patrilineage, the word used would have been oanti which phonetically sounds like the English word “aunt.” While aunt is the most convenient English translation for oma it does not truly capture the essence and nuances of how it is used in the isiZulu language, which is why mothers is used in this article.

5 The single-strand method is regarded as the earliest and the oldest method of beadworking (Klopper 1989; Boram-Hays 2000). The technique entails putting beads through a single strand of cording that may be made of cotton or nylon. It is noted that, before the use of cotton or nylon as well as glass beads, the technique generally involved beads made of leopard or lion claws as well as amalosi or imfibinga seeds being strung on animal gut (Boram-Hays 2000, 501; Nettleton 2014, 342; Boram-Hays 2015, 29).

6 For this technique, strings of beads are wound around a filler of grass, cloth, or some other type of rigid form. As a result of the technique involving beading around a rigid form, the result takes a three-dimensional and tubular structure. This form of beadworking is said to date back to the middle of the nineteenth century (Klopper 1992; Boram-Hays 2000).

7 Interestingly, a study by Ngwenya (1995, 10) suggests that umsomi was popularized by the Msomi gang, which was the notorious gang in the late 1950s and early 1960s operating in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra. Attempts to find out when the wearing of umsomi started being believed to have some healing properties for infants, as Princess suggested in the interview, were unsuccessful. However, it should be stated that, while Princess mentioned her own children having worn it, a popular practice of wearing umsomi for healing is generally done by the elderly who sometimes substitute it with a copper bangle. This is because copper is believed to possess anti-inflammatory properties that help reduce bodily pain associated with arthritis.

8 Sometimes this is referred to as the brick-in-the-wall technique and uses the name ugcimusizi. It derives its name from how it is done, and it looks like a brick wall. The flat version of the technique begins with a bead ladder used as a foundation, thereafter, rows of beads are laid either vertically or horizontally, one after another until a “fabric” of beads is formed (Wells 1996; Gourley, Davis and Talbott 2001). According to Nettleton (2015, 15), the “brick stitch was an important addition to the beadworkers’ repertoire because it enabled the introduction of a much more varied (although still constricted) set of possibilities in design, particularly complex geometries of chevrons, triangles, and their combinations via varying symmetries and fractal logic.” In later years, the “beadfabric” technique would evolve with the incorporation of three-dimensional surfaces over them, such as metal studs.

Additional information

Funding

National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences Doctoral Scholarship (SDS17/1647)

Notes on contributors

Khaya Mchunu

Khaya Mchunu is a senior lecturer in the Department of Fashion Design, University of Johannesburg. He obtained his Ph.D. in Visual and Performing Arts from the Durban University of Technology. He currently has two research interests. The first is studying community sewing practices in the South African context. The second is the link between fashion, clothing, and individuals, an interest area broadly approached through biographical research. His work locates itself within fashion for social impact. [email protected]