textile
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african-art
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organic
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textile
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abstraction
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natural texture
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mixed medium
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organic texture
Dimensions: 23 3/4 × 11 1/4 in. (60.33 × 28.58 cm)
Copyright: No Known Copyright
This barkcloth panel was made by the Mbuti people, it now lives at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It's an interesting piece because the raw material is so present. The texture of the barkcloth is really beautiful. It's got this warm, earthy tone and the lines drawn on top have a kind of hesitant, searching quality, a bit like automatic drawing, or even Cy Twombly's mark-making. There is one mark in particular that gets me, toward the left side: a cluster of small straight lines which might be topographical, or abstract. This piece has a casualness, embracing the quirks and irregularities of the natural world, and reminding us that art doesn't always have to be about grand gestures.
Comments
minneapolisinstituteofart over 1 year ago
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Mbuti men collect pieces of the inner layer of tree bark, soak them in water, and pound them until they are thin and pliable. Mbuti women then use twigs or their fingers to decorate these canvases with intricate designs that show repetitions of a single element or various groups of motifs. The Mbuti people live in the Ituri rainforest in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and the abstract imagery in their art expresses the shapes and motions of their natural environment. The barkcloth paintings can be seen as maps of the forest, invoking trails and webs, insects and animals, leaves and shelters. Yet these visual compositions also refer to the language of Mbuti music, characterized by syncope, free improvisation, and polyrhythm. As such, the painted barkcloths become graphic soundscapes, rendering a multitude of sonic events in conjunction with silence, captured by the paintings’ negative space.
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