I am bringing into this research a formal background in art and design in the context of sustainable development in South East Africa. Over a period of nearly ten years I have been involved in projects that were based in remote coastal communities in Mozambique. My contributions there have ranged from historic and archaeological research in heritage tourism projects, to leading a skills and training initiative that supported rural women farmers in developing alternative income opportunities through the production and sale of textile products.
Throughout my time in Mozambique I was inspired by its material culture. I spent seven years working as part of a community development project situated at the N’komati River estuary in the southern part of the country. There I was challenged to work with materials that were locally available and use them to support opportunities for learning and economic growth. I taught women from the village how to sew and together we created bags and pouches from reused and recycled plastic bags, rice sacks and pieces of printed cloth. The factory printed cloth locally known as ‘Capulana’ became one of our most important raw materials. Despite a high level of poverty amongst the community the frequent purchase of new print fabrics seemed an important investment to the women of the village and the prevalence of these cloths in women’s everyday lives made me want to find out more about them.
I began to explore the imagery and design of the fabrics by using them as canvas for my paintings and layering them with new patterns and narratives. This brought the cloth into close coalescence with fundamental questions that had always arisen in the context of my work as a painter: Why create? Why make stuff? How does it add meaning? Realising the capacity of the fabric to tell a story and engage people in meaningful ways seemed to reveal an unexplored potential. I began to ask myself, how could these cloths represent images that would contribute to peoples sense of self-sufficiency, identity, and agency in achieving sustainable development? How could a design be more than just aesthetically pleasing and do something towards positive change in a community that was facing such daily challenges and hardships?
This has been my entry point to researching African print fabrics as part of a Master study in sustainable design. It has taken me on a journey of cross cultural exchange and has prompted me to question concepts of social identity in an increasingly global world. It has revealed numerous complexities and has challenged some of my assumptions about the definition of cultural ownership and authenticity. It made me realise that meaning is born from people, not from things. It is not the meaning that is put into design that matters, but the meaning people make from it. The challenge has been to suggest approaches for design that would make these encounters more likely than not, and inspire rather than impose.
Marion Herlet, August 2016
How to use this site
Rather than clearly emerging problems and solutions, this study has resulted much more in a kind of mapping of a complex terrain in which questions of perception and interpretation may significantly shape individual opinions. My decision to make the research available as an online website and blog has been partly to put it ‘out there’ for debate but also to create a useful tool…continue reading
Who I am
I am bringing into this research a formal background in art and design in the context of sustainable development in South East Africa. Over a period of nearly ten years I have been involved in projects that were based in remote coastal communities in Mozambique. My contributions there have ranged from historic and archaeological research in heritage tourism projects, to leading a skills and training initiative that supported rural women farmers in developing alternative income opportunities through the production and sale of textile products.
Throughout my time in Mozambique I was inspired by its material culture. I spent seven years working as part of a community development project situated at the N’komati River estuary in the southern part of the country. There I was challenged to work with materials that were locally available and use them to support opportunities for learning and economic growth. I taught women from the village how to sew and together we created bags and pouches from reused and recycled plastic bags, rice sacks and pieces of printed cloth. The factory printed cloth locally known as ‘Capulana’ became one of our most important raw materials. Despite a high level of poverty amongst the community the frequent purchase of new print fabrics seemed an important investment to the women of the village and the prevalence of these cloths in women’s everyday lives made me want to find out more about them.
I began to explore the imagery and design of the fabrics by using them as canvas for my paintings and layering them with new patterns and narratives. This brought the cloth into close coalescence with fundamental questions that had always arisen in the context of my work as a painter: Why create? Why make stuff? How does it add meaning? Realising the capacity of the fabric to tell a story and engage people in meaningful ways seemed to reveal an unexplored potential. I began to ask myself, how could these cloths represent images that would contribute to peoples sense of self-sufficiency, identity, and agency in achieving sustainable development? How could a design be more than just aesthetically pleasing and do something towards positive change in a community that was facing such daily challenges and hardships?
This has been my entry point to researching African print fabrics as part of a Master study in sustainable design. It has taken me on a journey of cross cultural exchange and has prompted me to question concepts of social identity in an increasingly global world. It has revealed numerous complexities and has challenged some of my assumptions about the definition of cultural ownership and authenticity. It made me realise that meaning is born from people, not from things. It is not the meaning that is put into design that matters, but the meaning people make from it. The challenge has been to suggest approaches for design that would make these encounters more likely than not, and inspire rather than impose.
Marion Herlet, August 2016
How to use this site
Rather than clearly emerging problems and solutions, this study has resulted much more in a kind of mapping of a complex terrain in which questions of perception and interpretation may significantly shape individual opinions. My decision to make the research available as an online website and blog has been partly to put it ‘out there’ for debate but also to create a useful tool…continue reading