Cloth is the Center of the World: Nigerian Textiles, Global Perspectives.

Edited by Susan J. Torntore

The Goldstein Museum of Design, University of Minnesota, St. Paul. 2001. 80 pp., 16 b/w & 41 color photos, map, appendix. $20 softcover.

Art collections, particularly those in private hands, often reveal as much about the collector as they do about the objects they comprise. They elicit biographical as well as art historical questions Why were these particular works selected? What life experiences placed the collector in a position to acquire them? Did he or she have a particular relationship to the artists and the places where objects and purchases were made? These questions are made all the more interesting when the works in question were introduced to the corpus of world art history by the very person who acquired them. In such instances, the collector's zeal is complemented by scholarly inquiry; making the group of artworks much more than the sum of its parts. Cloth Is the Center of the World documents such a collection: Joanne B. Eicher's Nigerian textiles.

Eicher's textiles tell stories, both scholarly and personal. Many of them are contained, or implied, in this publication, which was produced to accompany an exhibition at the Goldstein Museum of Design at the University of Minnesota. Eicher, a professor at the University, acquired Nigerian textiles over the course of nearly forty years, building not only a personal collection but also a corpus of scholarship. In addition to documenting her textiles, Cloth Is the Center of the World constitutes an homage to her research and teaching career. Using Eicher's collection and fieldnotes as points of departure, and interviewing Eicher herself four of her colleagues (one, a former student) elucidate the complex histories and relationships out of which these textiles were created. The themes that traverse the essays reflect Eicher's own research interests: the crucial role of women as artists and patrons in Nigeria, the technical innovations by which artists remain always competitive and always modern, the global reach of African textile artists and consumers, and the personal nature of textiles that makes them so universally collectible. (Eicher found that these textiles were often accumulated and displayed in their original contexts much as they are in Western collections.)

The book addresses four types of cloth. Three are characteristically Nigerian (akwete, pelete bite, and adire), and one is inherently transnational (wax prints). Though the subject may appear to be relatively narrow--four textile styles from the southern half of Nigeria--in fact the essays in this slim volume cover vast ground. Susan Torntore, the exhibition's curator and editor of this volume, describes in her introduction the range of subjects addressed: "The four essays touch on such major topics as identity, ethnicity, gender, spirituality and worldview, patronage, cultural reproduction, innovation and creativity, the construction of meaning, domestic economies, and trade relations ..." (p. 10).

This impressive scope is a fitting testament to Eicher's long scholarly devotion to African garments and textiles, which, thanks in part to her, have come into their own as subjects of academic study. When she began her career, few scholars would have credited them as matters for serious pursuit, though they likely would have thought it only appropriate that a woman should study these "feminine" art forms. The essays, all by women, demonstrate the powerful role of textiles as symbolic objects and documents of history that are as aesthetically and culturally rich as any medium of artistic expression.

Torntore provides an excellent introduction to some of the issues explored in greater detail in later essays, such as globalization, cultural identity, and the construction of gender identities. More interesting, perhaps, is her discussion of Eicher's collecting history and its place in the larger history of women as collectors. Her essay follows a brief preface by Eicher herself, who notes that her corpus of textiles developed informally, largely as a result of travels and opportunity: "I didn't set out to make a collection, I just bought cloth whenever f saw something I liked" (p. 7). The four major types of cloth in her collection are the result of "special friendships and associations" rather than a deliberate choice (p. 8). Many of those who visit textile-rich parts of the world acquire pieces in the same way--according to the logic of their travels rather than any inherent attribute of the objects. What sets Eicher's collection apart is fieldwork: her records of the people, techniques, prices, and histories that surround the acquisitions.

Torntore notes the parallel between the Nigerian association of these textiles with women's lives--for they were created, worn, and collected by women--and Western traditions of collecting as a reflection of gendered cultural spheres: in studies of collecting in Western cultures, women are associated with the realms of textiles and ornament--objects of display--mad men with objects of utility. Torntore also points out that Eicher came to her collecting in 1963 via a explicitly gendered route: it began "as an integral part of her home-making role in Enugu, [when she was] on leave from her own professional career and there instead as the wife of a visiting professor" (p. 13). One of the primary uses to which she put her textile acquisitions was as home decor--a stereotypically feminine realm. The long Western history of privileging male over female artistic domains had a marked impact on the treatment of non-Western arts. African sculpture (a male art form) was admitted to the rarified realm of art long before textiles and garments. Yet Eicher's fieldwork information that accompanies her textiles elevated them above the limitations imposed by gendered hierarchies of art/craft.

The four essays provide insight into the complex histories and contemporary roles of akwete, pelete bite, wax prints, and adire. All the authors have published widely on the subject of African, and Nigerian, textiles, and several knew or worked with artists whose works are represented in the catalogue. Despite the textiles' diversity in technique, style, history, and use, the essays are united by several common themes. These cloths have long been part of interethnic and international networks of trade and creative influence. All have symbolic roles and meanings as well as practical uses. All have reverberations in other art forms, including body painting, praise songs, funerary displays, and studio art paintings. All are worn, wrapped around the body, or cut and stitched to create garments as well as statements about personal identity.

Lisa Aronson's contribution on Akwete weavers and the markets for their cloth elucidates the complex history of ethnic interactions in the Niger Delta region. She also offers fascinating information about the Akwete construction of artistic creativity and the secrecy that surrounds aesthetic and technical innovations by weavers. Legendary nineteenth-century weaver Dada Nwakwata provides a model for later Akwete weavers. Her introduction of new motifs and techniques created great demand for her cloth. She carefully guarded her innovations, some of which came to her in dreams (evidence of the spiritual dimension of her craft), and she was likely also inspired by cloths traded into Akwete markets from Ijo and Yoruba regions. Dada Nwakwata's fortunes also depended on external markets--as far away as Europe. Aronson introduces Dakuru Rose Ordor, an Akwete weaver with whom both she and Eicher worked, to demonstrate the continued emphasis on originality; distant markets, and diverse influences. Many of the cloths listed In the exhibition checklist (an appendix to the catalogue) were made by Ordor or her family members.

The heart of Aronson's contribution concerns the complex trade networks by which Akwete weavers sold their own cloth and gained access to imported textiles. Extraordinarily, the Akwete themselves rarely wear or use the cloth created by their weavers but instead choose imported Indian madras and other textiles. The Akwete region has historically been deeply involved in regional and international trade. Aronson describes the influence of one important trade good: aso olona, cloth produced by Ijebu Yoruba weavers for ceremonial use. With its distinctive abstract and figurative motifs, aso olona is ideally suited to complement local beliefs about tortoises (Ikaki, a powerful trickster spirit) and other spiritually powerful creatures. This fact was not lost on Akwete weavers, who quickly responded by adjusting the width of their looms and the motifs that adorned their cloths to replicate key attributes of the Yoruba textile. Cloths acquired through trade with the British were also adapted to local uses, and they provided a source of inspiration for local weavers. Global political and economic factors had a direct impact on cloth trading networks; shifts in British colonial control over the important palm oil trade brought British officials to Akwete, creating a new audience for local cloth and leading to the decline of Ijo access to Akwete markets. Later, the Biafran War dealt a substantial blow to Akwete efforts to support local weaving industries. Thus, Eicher's collection of Akwete cloths, as explicated by Aronson, contains histories of contact, conflict, and creativity.

Elisha R Renne's essay on the Kalabari cloth pelete bite which was first studied by Eicher and her frequent collaborator, Tonye V. Erekosima, also offers a dramatic demonstration of the global networks in which textiles have long circulated. Pelete bite represents a fascinating amalgamation of local and international influences. By carefully cutting and removing threads from striped or plaid Indian madras to create openwork patterns, Kalabari women transform an imported commodity, into an emblem of Kalabari ethnicity. Renne describes how the cloth is so closely linked to local culture that its presence is central to funerals and spirit-possession rituals. The Kalabarization of this cloth is particularly striking, for not only the cloth but also the tools by which it is made (needles and knives) are acquired through trade. Renne sums up this paradox: "Thus, ironically, the Kalabari people's participation in the global economy ... served to strengthen their reproduction of a particular Kalabari identity, reflected in the production of [a] type of cloth unique to them" (p. 34).

Renne uses pelete bite to explore the centrality of women in the preservation of Kalabari culture. Mythological heroines are said to have worn powerful magic cloth, described in praise songs as having the same symbolic motifs as pelete bite. Many of those motifs refer to important mythological and historical knowledge, held by women who pass the symbols on to future generations as they teach the technique. Renne notes that the power of women, producers of cloth and of children, is symbolically acknowledged in the masquerades of an all-male initiation society whose participants wear pelete bite face cloths.

The experience of a specific artist, Madame Amonia Akoko, illustrates the potent role women play in Kalabari aesthetic and ritual practice. Eicher and Akoko worked closely together, their friendship founded in "their shared interest in pelete bite cloth and Kalabari culture" (p. 34). Akoko is a virtuoso artist who has created cloths of astounding complexity. As a member of a spirit-possession cult, she is also a key participant in local religious activities. Cloth is one of the tools she uses to embody the nature spirits who speak through her; she wears pelete bite and other textiles to draw the spirits into her body. For Kalabari spirits as well as Kalabari people, pelete bite is a powerful symbol of local identity.

The wax prints that Anne M. Spencer ad dresses in her essay were also produced outside Africa, but unlike pelete bite, they were not transformed by Africans to suit local markets. instead, transformation occurred before the textiles were traded into African markets, as European manufacturers sought to customize their wares to suit the tastes of their intended African consumers. African textile manufacturers later began to produce wax prints domestically. Eicher's factory-printed textiles were collected in Europe and in Nigeria. Produced in England, Holland, and later Japan, China, and Africa, these cloths are the result of an intermingling of Indonesian batiks, European designs, mad African aesthetic preferences. Spencer's discussion, which draws on the growing research into the wax prints' history and iconography, is evidence of the increasing scholarly acknowledgment of the validity of hybrid art forms.

Spencer discusses how African merchants and consumers domesticate the cloth by assigning locally significant names to the patterns (many of which refer to proverbs) and making them part of local systems of status. Though she does not discuss it explicitly, she alludes to the important role of women as consumers and merchants in the marketing of wax prints. Local and international politics have affected their designs, most clearly in the commemorative cloths that record specific events and personalities. The reader may find that the geographical location of this essay is somewhat unclear--Spencer moves to Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire to discuss some patterns and proverbs. Perhaps the contusion that results is wholly appropriate, for the same cloth may appear in multiple contexts, where they are assigned different meanings.

In the final essay, Norma H. Wolff discusses the history iconography, and uses of adire, the well-known indigo resist cloth of the Yoruba. This textile, too, grew out of global interactions, for although indigo has an extremely long history in Nigeria, adire as it is made today was developed only after imported European cloth became widely available. Over the course of its history, adire's fortunes have responded to political and economic changes; new techniques and new markets have resulted in dramatic developments such as the use of silkscreening and synthetic indigo dyes. Eicher began building her collection at a time of great artistic creativity, after Nigeria's independence, when many indigenous art forms became symbols of national pride. Wolff includes excerpts from interviews with Eicher, who describes her interactions with women who make and wear adire.

This cloth provides a text by which to understand Yoruba mythology, aesthetics, and cosmology. Drawing on a wealth of previous scholarship concerning Yoruba religion and philosophy, Wolff describes how the color, symbolic motifs, and composition of adire all contain cultural information. Wearing this cloth is similarly symbolic, for it may signal ethnic identity, group solidarity, and, when it is tailored into new styles, modernity. Wolff notes that women are at the heart of adire's changing story, from the dyers who first invented the resist technique to Nike Davies and other contemporary artists who paint adire canvases.

The appendix contains a brief collection description and exhibition checklist for each of the four cloth types, written by the author of the corresponding essay. Each author describes the particular nature of Eicher's collection--the techniques and time period represented, and any outstanding strengths of fire textile group. The checklist provides cloth sizes, dates, and provenance wherever possible. This is a useful feature which, in the absence of images, offers basic information on the specific contents of Eicher's collection.

Though it contains substantial scholarship, Cloth Is the Center of the World is a modestly produced publication. Its images are quite small--most just 1 1/2" wide. Though legible, the photographs are not of high quality. I am pleased to note, however, that most are in color--all important for a publication on vividly hued textiles. Many readers will be grateful that the Goldstein Museum of Design published this record of its exhibition, for this gathering of scholarship has produced a readable, informative artistic biography of four Nigerian textiles and the woman who collected them.

Victoria Rovine is curator of African art at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. Her work on textiles includes research in Mall on the contemporary use of bogolan, or mudcloth, and more recently a focus on fashion design. She is also the author of Bogolon: Shaping Culture through Cloth in Contemporary Mali (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001) and a consulting editor of African Arts. Rovine is currently conducting research on African fashion and the influence of Africa on Western fashion.