PARR Feedback: Lesiba Mabitsela

The Pan-African Research Residency started as a 3-week journey to Durban, KZN from the 25th of June to the 12th of July 2023 to look for the Ficus Natalensis – the scientific name for a common fig tree in South Africa. Our goal was to enquire whether our species of tree that possibly grew in Kwa-Zulu Natal shared similar qualities to the one grown in Uganda known as the Mutuba Tree where Olubugo (barkcloth), a culturally significant textile to the royal kingdom of Baganda, is made from. The multi-skilled research team comprised of Liz Kobusinge – an interdisciplinary Ugandan artist, Lesiba Mabitsela – an interdisciplinary South African artist and designer, Sheila Nakitende – an interdisciplinary artist and Thabiso Ncanana, a Fashion Design student from the Durban University of Technology and selected participant for the inaugural Pan-African Research Residency in 2023.

The Pan-African Research Residency – Conceptual Framework:

The Pan-African Research Residency conceptually came about through a shared love between Sheila Nakitende and myself for avant-garde Japanese fashion design, specifically that of the late Issey Miyake. The significance is that through our interest we had come to learn that barkcloth inspired the master designer in producing one of his groundbreaking projects titled, A-POC which is an acronym for A Piece Of Cloth. Miyake and his collaborator Dai Fujiwara would go on to fuse cutting-edge technology to produce uncut single rolls of fabric that regularly had entire garments incorporated into it. Clients were often invited to cut their garments out of the rolls of fabric they purchased.

What was evident to Sheila and me at the time of discussing how we could work with barkcloth, was the frustration that people from abroad; designers, crafters and artists always manage to see the value in crafts, arts and cultures from the African continent yet Africans appear a lot less enthusiastic. One example is a German company named Barktex which has established a company that is extracting from the indigenous knowledge of Olubugo and producing a silicone-based blended version of barkcloth for the international market. As a result, both Sheila and I were inspired by how Japanese designers had managed to take charge of their own customs and indigenous practices, continually pushing their craft for a more contemporary audience. In doing so, they have become the natural custodians of Japanese craft, growing the canon and becoming teachers for the next generation of Japanese designers and artists. We wanted to do this with barkcloth, originally to just pleat the barkcloth in an ode to Issey Miyake and his other seminal project, Pleats Please.

I managed to meet Liz Kobusinge on a separate occasion in Johannesburg, whilst she was on residency at Lapa Residency space based in Brixton, Johannesburg with another Ugandan based artist, Darlyn Komukama. We instantly connected during their visit to my studio, talking about the state of avant-garde fashion in Uganda and that Liz had grown up a designer as well. Meeting Liz was probably the most important moment towards the creation of this residency (apart from her practice in making art from barkcloth paper like Sheila). She mentioned in conversation that we South Africans have our own version of the Mutuba Tree, the Ficus Natalensis which could be found in KwaZulu Natal. The exchange program stemmed from this encounter, and it has become bigger than I could have ever imagined since.

Following our encounter and some discussions about the possibility of hosting such an initiative, we had thought to conceptually ground the residency around indigenous exchanges on the continent focusing on fabric manipulation techniques and aesthetics from the Eastern-African regions of the continent such as folds, drapery and pleats. Since it was an exchange program between Uganda and South Africa, we felt that it was important to share indigenous knowledge, crafts, techniques or artefacts from one of our own cultural groups in South Africa and their practices, specifically from the KwaZulu Natal region. This is where we had thought to investigate the indigenous practice of making isidwaba, a leather skirt traditionally worn by married Zulu women.

Networks and partners:

The Pan-African Research Residency was made possible through funding from the British Council and the National Arts Council who assisted us in funding a three-day workshop with students, lecturers & Alumni from DUT.

Our project partner, Creative Nestlings Foundation was tasked with assisting us in a consultative capacity on marketing and fundraising matters including assistance with spreading our reach through access and communication to its network of young black creative practitioners on the African continent. This was important for us as we aimed at making new connections on the African continent through means that were not overly academic. Their input as marketing partners for the overarching theme of the ‘The Fold’ and consultation of our brand identity produced fundraising material such as pitch decks for our fundraising efforts, enlisting the Ghanaian-based agency, 2dots Space creative agency for the graphics and visual identity for all three projects including PARR.

Creative Nestlings Foundation directly influenced the reach of PARR by suggesting that we think about a regional public call ensuring that a Durban-based student became part of our travelling team, making the residency more attractive to Durban based/focused fundraising initiatives whilst spreading our visibility with interested youth/students, practitioners and lecturers. We were also introduced to the cultural institution, KQ Hub which would become our Ugandan-based partner for the residency in Kampala in 2024.

We also found it important to collaborate with local cultural stakeholders in Durban including Russel Hlongwane from eKhweni Residency and Project Space, Angela Shaw the director of KZNSA Gallery and Contemporary Archive Project (CAP) – a photographic collective led by Niamh Welsh-Vorster and Paulo Menezes.

Apart from our partners and collaborators, we also met with local artisans, historians and designers such as mMa Khethiwe Memela from Umlazi, mMa Phumzile’s Nkosi who gave us a guided tour of the Phansi Museum, world-renowned Durban-based fashion designer Amanda Laird Cherry, the managing director of a heritage family of master pleaters Mr. Ahmad Tayob and the wider cultural community of Durban.

Reflections:

Getting to know the community:

Ekhweni: We first needed to build relationships with the local community in a short time to announce our arrival, our intentions and collective cohesion for the project. We managed to do this in collaboration with our hosts Russel Hlongwane from Ekhweni Residency and Project Space where some of us were staying and where we hosted most of our public dinners, meetings etc. These social gatherings created spaces for networking with our partners and engagement with the Barkcloth itself. I remember one such moment when the Barkcloth that Sheila and Liz brought from Uganda was unfolded and displayed in the kitchen following dinner to a circle of appreciative and interested spectators.

Phansi Museum: We managed to reach out and form connections with local artisans, designers and custodians to Zulu and Durban heritage for example – during a guided tour of artefacts collected by the Phansi Museum. Not only did we come to learn more about the Isidwaba, including the differences between Xhosa and the Zulu versions, we also became aware of the precarious relationship the museum had with some locals understandably due to its colonial connections. This was explained to me by Lindokuhle Nkosi, one of the photographers who formed part of the CAP collective.

Modern interpretations of Isidwaba:

On another visit we met with local isidwaba artisan and recording artist mMa Khethiwe Memela who lives and runs her practice from Umlazi, a township situated on the outskirts of Durban CBD where she showed us how she makes Isidwaba for her clients. What was rather interesting and of note to us was that mMa Khethiwe’e Isidwaba was created through incisions made into a linear piece of hide where godets made from triangular pieces of discarded hide were then hand sewn in with thread made from sisal. In hindsight, it would have been interesting to have visited Phansi Museum after our visit to mMa Khethiwe to assess the difference in techniques between older versions collected by the museum and hers. This revisit may have added another question to my visit regarding dying techniques as mMa Khetiwe dyed her isidwaba into a dark black with petroleum jelly and ash that rubbed off onto your hands quite easily, this seemed like her adaptation rather than a traditional method.

Minerals in the ground:

We learnt that the petroleum jelly, used to darken the isidwaba was her adaptation from a craft tradition that saw the isidwaba being buried into the ground, creating a chemical reaction with the soil/clay influencing the texture of the leather. I found this encounter astonishing as this was a similar process to making black Olubugo. Similarly, soil and clay became another topic of discussion in the process of dying barkcloth into a darker “black” colour which is quite different from the rich ochre colour we had come to learn about. The ochre version of the barkcloth is usually turned into a rich reddish/brown colour through the tanines in the cloth which are exposed to the sun whereas the black bark cloth gains its darker colour by submerging ochre barkcloth in the ground or clay. I asked Sheila whether there were any volcanoes in Uganda to explain why the soil/clay turns the Olubugo black, recounting experiencing the benefits of volcanic lava during a residency in Iceland many years before. Whilst she had confirmed that there was indeed volcanic activity in the region we are still to confirm whether this is the case.

ALC:

We conducted a few site visits in Durban including one to the studio of designer, Amanda Laird Cherry. We were given a tour of her studio and all the work the company has been doing by creative director Brendan Sturrock. Amanda and Brendan’s work is influenced quite generously by the cultures within the KZN region. Other techniques such as the pleating techniques of the saree and the Umblaselo also influence the creation of some of their ranges. Amanda would then introduce us to the company that usually pleats for her, SA Pleaters.

Pleating archives:

We were introduced to Mr Ahmed Tyob who showed us around his family’s pleating company SA Pleaters. He mentioned that they were one of a few companies that still hand-pleated their fabrics and that heirloom pleat designs were handed down through the family. We had the pleasure of viewing the pleat patterns they had in storage and gasped when we were told that they regularly threw out some of the pleat designs that have been in use for decades. We suggested that DUT should be contacted should they want the patterns to be taken off of their hands for archival purposes. What was clear from these interactions was a need for an archivist in the region to collect, and write about the history of hand pleating and the textile industry in Durban.

New Patterns workshop:

Speaking of Durban University of Technology, we were extremely honoured to have to facilitate a three-day paper-making workshop with alumni and current fashion and visual arts students from the university through the assistance of the HOD in Fashion Design and visual artist Lee Scott-Hempson. The three-day workshop saw us teach students about barkcloth and then collectively produce barkcloth paper which were then turned into garments. These garments would later be displayed at an exhibition hosted by the KZNSA Gallery, marked by a keynote presentation by UK-based Ugandan designer and barkcloth activist, Jose Hendo.

Durban Botanical Gardens:

We were extremely fortunate to receive an invitation to the Durban Botanical Gardens from its curator, Martin Clement. Together with the team, we were able to locate the Ficus Natalensis which sparked encouraging discussions of possible tree-growing initiatives and knowledge exchange programs with Mutuba tree growers in Uganda.

We were also happy to learn about another plant in the vicinity which was integral to the sustainability of barkcloth production, namely the Strelitzia or Wild Banana. Tree growers and harvesters in Uganda use giant banana leaves as natural plasters for the Mutuba tree once it is skinned of its outer bark to protect the exposed tree stump from harmful bacteria and bugs. The tree bark is then regenerated after a period of a few weeks. Banana leaf stems are also being harvested in Uganda to make sustainable fabric.  Through this encounter, we learnt about the ecosystem integral to the growth of the Mutuba tree. The tree is stripped of its bark only to be healed by banana leaf and where the Wild Banana plant thrives due to the ability of the Mutuba tree to prepare the soil through its root system for further agricultural growth.

The legacy of the residency:

Pan-African exchange: PARR has taught me as a researcher that we have more similarities than differences. Especially on the back of the re-emergence of Afrophobic prejudices in the country of which Durban was one of the hotbeds. I was struck on arrival to Durban’s potential by Sheila’s comments on how similar the weather in KZN was to that of Uganda, that the city reminded her of Kampala. With all the knowledge we had gathered regarding similarities of techniques and cultural sartorial customs (such as the tying of the Gomesi sash and iQiya – a head wrap draped in a series of folds from the Xhosa in the Eastern Cape), it became apparent that colonialism played just as much a factor in separating us as Africans, our knowledge and our cultures.

Maps were drawn and borders were set but the roots of natural vegetation on the continent continue to grow wherever it deems fit regardless of  European imperialism. The questions became:

“What if we were not colonised”? Would there have been cultural and indigenous exchange between the Baganda and the Zulu kingdom seeing that the same species of tree grew in the Southern region including other regions such as Tanzania and Kenya too?

Thinking about the African renaissance that Thabo Mbheki notably championed including the Pan-African dream of 33 before him, projects such as these put words to action, doing more in the building of bridges between our respective African countries, cultures and customs.

Afro-Sustainability:

We also challenged the youth, practitioners and locals of KwaZulu Natal to play an active role in removing the stigma surrounding indigenous craft and cultural practices which we saw as aged obscure, racist sentiments of coloniality. At the same time, we challenged the need to keep culture stagnant, often a tool of manipulation by those that are deemed to be the authority of said culture which in many ways does the job of the colonial machine in keeping perspectives of African production as primitive.

Sheila and Liz had much to contribute in this regard from a personal perspective as they were both women working with barkcloth and Liz not directly sharing family lineage with the Baganda. Sheila, being a custodian of barkcloth making through her grandfather and a rather vocal activist about being a woman in an industry traditionally reserved for men (and in an equally fractured Ugandan society where queer/gender identity and human rights are concerned) encouraged us to avoid culture becoming a burden. In turn, we asked the public to be brave, respectfully ask more questions and own their distinct cultural narrative and advancements as far as global conversations on the sustainability of the clothing and textile industries are concerned by introducing the term, “afro-sustainability”.

Afro-sustainability is a concept that started to ferment in my mind during my consultative tenure as a member of the Einstein Circle on Fashion Education – an initiative organised around the concept of defashioning education by Renata Stauss and Franziska Schreiber from the American University of Paris and the University of the Arts in Berlin respectively – including an online lecture given by Kenyan multi-disciplinary artist, Sunny Dolat for the Design Futures Lab residency organised by sustainable fashion publication TWYG Mag in collaboration with extended reality (XR) non-profit organisation, Electric South which I had been a part of as a participant in 2022. What was clear from these engagements was that there is no singular global approach to curbing unsustainable fashion practices and that our relationships to clothing and sustainability varies – based on the different socio-political circumstances in each community.

Sunny’s lecture affirmed thoughts I had around the misnomer of clothes being thrown away as a practice in African households, making an example through the life journey of a t-shirt that eventually ends up as the common house rag (or as we like to call it “Skroplap”), usually reserved for wiping spilt liquids and cleaning bathrooms. The same concerns were tabled by author Julia Watson and her book titled Lo-Tek: Design by Radical Indigenism in which she advocates for the recognition of indigenous knowledge to tackle some of the world’s problems in architecture and design, specifically where sustainable methodologies are concerned. As a result, we loosely started introducing the word Afro-sustainability to inspire the students to speak to our unique experiences with clothing production on the continent. In hindsight, this reflection became an example of decoloniality on the ground – unfacilitated by big academic institutions and most importantly,  in action and as an act of refusal.

Transdisciplinary research:

Following our encounter with Martin Clement from the Durban Botanical Gardens it became immediately evident how impactful the project had become in placing indigenous knowledge at the centre of trans-disciplinary research efforts. This way of approaching the residency was partly inspired by two residency programmes I had been a part of in 2014 and 2015 respectively, “Open Lab: The Art of Being Public” based in Bloemfontein and Richmond in the Northern Cape and “Reitir: International Collaboration Project” based in Iceland.

Collaboration:

Collaboration was key in both residencies. This was evident in how the range of skills and experiences from different parts of the world or social backgrounds influences the outcomes of projects. I particularly remembered how the scale and the site of an artwork influenced how impactful it would become. The scale of involved disciplines in this project has meant that the amount of funding required to sustain it has grown but the possible outcomes of seeing a local fashion student working with an experienced horticulturist whether formal or informal to make an impact on Durban’s sustainable textile production future is potentially priceless. These initiatives can only happen through shared concerns and engagements. In the same vein, our inability to extend Liz’s stay in South Africa regardless of the importance of the research highlights how far we are from true collaboration on the continent.

Social Cohesion:

Both residencies placed a substantial focus on social cohesion through social engagements between residents and locals. Curated group dinners/meals were particularly important for breaking down social and institutional walls and idea-sharing. I got a sense of this dinner’s impact from Amanda Laird-Cherry who was engaged in lengthy conversations with Sheila Nakitende about the possibilities of barkcloth.

It was important that the residency was energising and did not feel constrictive to participants despite the rigorous schedule that we placed on ourselves. This is a very effective way to build team morale and enthusiasm for our research. We made genuine connections with locals and had surprise encounters with people from other parts of the world we would otherwise not have been able to meet.  I found that we learned a lot more about Durban through local gossip at Berlin Bar in Glenwood, getting a tattoo at Trademark Tattoo just off Florida Rd or the personal histories of other locals found at Victoria Street Market. What was also key to both PARR residencies, was the impact made in local communities through financially supporting local businesses where possible -such as transport, catering etc. and site/studio visits.

Employment and other Opportunities:

We have managed to retain Thabiso as part of the organisational team for PARR24. This has been done with the view of continuing the legacy of the residency by ensuring incentives for continuing the research but also to one day hand over the baton to local interests and establishing networks in the KZN region for years to come. We have since developed the framework of our online course for The Fold where Thabiso and mMa Khetiwe will be involved. This is a strategy for AFRI and PARR24 to create employment opportunities for the communities we have been engaging.

I was happy to learn, following a conversation with mMa Khetiwe, that she was seeking opportunities to start her Master’s degree at DUT and has started a school in her community due to the impact that PARR has made in her life and how she sees indigenous practices. We hope more educational initiatives can grow from her success.

The New Patterns Workshop was made possible by the generous support of the National Arts Council @nacsouthafrica