This painted and dyed textile was inspired by a drawing by Nigerian artist Twins
Seven-Seven. |
Beier Collection debuts at Mead
This spring, the Mead Art Museum
displayed for the first time the Beier Collection of Yoruba textiles, which the
college acquired in 2002. The exhibit, called Cloth Only
Wears to Shreds: Textiles and Photographs from the Beier Collection, included many of the collection’s
160 pieces, together with videos that documented the use and social function
of these textiles in Nigeria. It also included a showing in Frost Library of
many of Ulli Beier’s remarkably intimate photographs of Nigerian life.
The textiles on display in the Mead included traditional indigo-dyed everyday
garments, gold-threaded formal fabrics, wildly eclectic ceremonial costumes and
bold modern designs. The cloth also displayed an enormous variety of geometric
patterns, dying techniques and weaving styles. According to Jill Meredith, the
director of the Mead Art Museum, the Beier Collection is “the core of an
international resource for Yoruba art and
culture at Amherst College.”
The exhibit’s variety reflected the
importance that textiles play in Yoruba culture and religion, where the significance
of cloth goes beyond body covering to express a profound belief system. In its
creation, the color, weave and design of cloth reflect the aesthetic sensibilities
and character of the artist, as well as the wearer. Extensive use of opulent
materials in a garment conveys power and authority. Cloth not only defines the
identity of the individual and of the family, but also evokes the wearer’s
ancestors, thus creating a metaphorical link between the living and the dead.
The Yoruba believe that fabric outlives its owner, that it can disintegrate but
cannot disappear from the material world. The phrase “cloth only wears
to shreds” is a refrain from an Ifa divination verse that refers to this
deathless, eternal quality and equates cloth with the Yorubas’ Supreme
Creator.
Rowland Abiodun, the John C. Newton Professor of Fine Arts and Black Studies,
who was co-curator of the exhibit with John Pemberton III, the Stanley Warfield
Crosby Professor of Religion, Emeritus, points out that when people meet on the
street in Nigeria, it is polite to greet the clothing before greeting the clothing’s
wearer. “To not greet the cloth would be an insult,” he says. “It
would be as though you were saying that the person did not exist and he or she
is not beautiful. If you had $1,000 and you wanted to give it to a person, he
wouldn’t take it until you had greeted him properly. Remember, cloth
itself is a deity.”
The gallery’s vivid display of color,
texture and movement was a reflection
of Ulli Beier, who first recognized and
promoted textiles as a major form of Yoruba artistry and cultural expression.
As an internationally known writer, teacher, scholar, translator, performing
arts producer, photographer and art collector, Beier catalyzed cultural change
in Nigeria by promoting interaction between indigenous and world artists, writers
and scholars. Together with his wife, Georgina, Beier fostered the global appreciation
of Yoruba art and culture through experimental publications, theaters and galleries.
As part of the Beier exhibition, Professor Abiodun invited Nigerian writer Wole
Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel laureate in literature and a long, close associate of
Ulli Beier, to give a lecture on “Orisa and Yoruba Humanism” in Johnson
Chapel. Soyinka, who was imprisoned during Nigeria’s civil war in 1967,
is considered one of the finest poetical playwrights in English, combining Yoruba
traditions
and Western culture.
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Photo: Stephen Petegorsky
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