Untangle
From 6-27 February 2020 WORLDART will host Untangle, a textile art exhibition that explores and re-imagines sustainability and consumption in contemporary art and design production processes.
Participating artists will be Francis Burger, Dannielle Clough, Gina Waldman, Sibabalwe Ndlwana, Nkuli Mlangeni-Berg, Sandi Gilman, Lizette Chirrime and Yemi Awosile.
Through interactive installations the audience will also be invited to engage and think about the meaning of production in a time where consumption is meaningless. “Interactivity produces meaning and by adding public engagement and creative and mindful contemplation, we hope that a bond will be formed between the producer or user and the artwork.” says organisers of the exhibition Nkuli Mlangeni-Berg and Sibabalwe Ndlwana.
Francis Burger is an artist and facilitator currently based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Francis works across media and processes - from education & facilitation work to publication design, textile art and pottery - with an interest in co-creative learning and crafting with natural materials.
Dannielle Clough lives and works in Cape Town. She studied art direction and graphic design at The Red and Yellow School before embarking on a career in visual art, digital design and thing-making. Some clients include Gucci, Adobe, The African Innovation foundation, United Nations, Origins, Nike and Drew Barrymore.
Gina Waldman is a mixed media and installation artist living and working in Johannesburg. Waldman works with feminised objects - Victorian etiquette books, tapestries, fabric, furniture, women crafts and other “domestic” objects - and uses them to engage in a dialogue about societal systems of power. Waldman argues that it is through these objects that we engage with the world and those objects uphold social and political hierarchies.
Sibabalwe Ndlwana is a textile artist and designer. Her focus is in exploring new ways in reviving and integrating the ancient traditions and techniques of indigenous weaving and dyeing methods. She completed her MA in Textile and New Materials design at Nuova Academia di Belle Arti in Milan in 2013 and currently works and lives in Cape Town.
Nkuli Mlangeni-Berg is a creative entrepreneur and the founder of The Ninevites, a collaborative platform and design studio best known for the handcrafted Sankara Rug which won Design Indaba’s Most Beautiful Object in South Africa in 2017. She seeks to explore under told narratives of life from Southern Africa using creativity, design and imagery. It is a celebration of black aesthetics that keeps pushing to tell African stories in ways that reflect its beauty and invention.
Sandi Gilman is a Cape Town based textile maker and weaver inspired by the use of yarns, fibers, rags and ribbons. She is the current chairperson of the Cape Guild of Weavers and founder of Westcliff Weavery and recent collaborations include projects with local and international fashion and interior designers in product development.
Lizette Chirrime was born in Mozambique, where she grew up and attended commercial school until the age of seventeen. Creating artworks using paint and sewing has always been an important pastime for her and she never received a formal arts education. In 2004 she was invited to participate in her first solo exhibition in Mozambique and in 2005 she accepted a three-month residency at Greatmore Studios in Cape Town, South Africa. Chirrime now lives and works in Cape Town. She creates large-scale textile-driven works on canvas. It consists of abstract forms rendered in a collage of printed fabrics from Tshwe-tshwe to other so-called African prints associated with dress on the continent.
Yemi Awosile is a designer living and working in London. Her work is informed by cultural insights expressed primarily through textiles and printed matter. The broader scope of her practice bridges design and visual arts through social interventions. Recent projects include collaborations with Tent Rotterdam, Tate Gallery, Contemporary And (C&) magazine and the British Council. She trained as a textile designer at the Royal College of Art and Chelsea College of Art. She is currently an Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths , School of Design.