The Silence of the Women. Bamana Mud Cloths
Five Continents Editions
English Text.
Milano, 2014; hardback, pp. 317, 132 col. ill., cm 20,5x27.
ISBN: 88-7439-670-8
- EAN13: 9788874396702
Subject: Essays (Art or Architecture),Textiles (Tapestries, Carpets, Embroyderies)
Places: Out of Europe
Extra: African Art and Tribal Art
Languages:
Weight: 1.66 kg
The Silence of the Women is the first full-length scholarly work devoted entirely to the textiles created by women of the Bamana people in Mali, West Africa. These traditional mud-dyed cloths have typically been treated as craft, but here, they are presented as a complex art form. Sarah Brett-Smith sensitively explores the hidden cultural testimony written into the mud-cloth patterns, documenting women's silent visual commentary on the events that dominate their lives--excision, arranged marriage, childbirth, and death. Exploring both art-historical and anthropological considerations of technique, style, symbolism, and function in Bamana textiles, this book illuminates a previously understudied art and gives voice to the women who make it.