Textiles Bogolan du Mali.

Textiles Bogolan du Mali Pauline Duponchel Collections du MEN 8. Neuchatel, Switzerland: Musee d'Ethnographie, 2004. 336 pp., 33 b/w illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Euros 15.00, Swiss francs 23.40, paper

This French-language book, published as part of a series documenting the collections of the Musee d'Ethnographie, Neuchatel, makes an important contribution to the study of African textiles and to the field of Mande arts and culture. Because it is a European museum publication, it may be difficult for North American readers to find. As I will describe, however, the book certainly warrants the extra effort required to track it down. Its catalogue section alone, in which fifty bogolan cloths are illustrated and thoroughly documented, makes this a valuable publication for any reader with an interest in textiles and their social roles. Duponchel's profiles of bogolan artists, her descriptions of the cloth's role in both ceremonial and quotidian contexts, and her observation of the cloth's growing popularity in Mall and beyond offer important insights into the continuities between village-based "traditional" bogolan and the urban markets that have spawned new styles in recent decades. However, for all of the book's strengths, it lacks a theoretical or analytical core. Duponchel offers an elegant assemblage of information, much of it gathered directly from artists, without synthesis into an argument that might reverberate beyond the facts at hand. Fortunately, the stories of these artists and the richly layered meanings of the cloth that they create make Textiles Bogolan du Mall a welcome addition to the growing corpus of publications on African cloth and clothing.

Bogolan, also referred to as bogolan or bogolanfini, is a uniquely Malian textile that has become familiar to consumers far beyond the villages and towns of the Bamana heartland in central Mali. The cloth is distinct in both its technique (a labor-intensive application of fermented mud to the negative space surrounding its patterns) and in its iconography (geometric motifs that refer to specific, often richly nuanced, information). Duponchel assembles here the results of more than a decade's study of bogolan production and consumption. The breadth of her research reflects her thirteen years in Mali, where she was based both in San, a city that has become the leading producer of bogolan for the tourist trade, and in Bamako. She immersed herself in the bogolan "scene" (I use the term advisedly, for by the time I arrived in Mali in 1991, bogolan had become the center of a network of artists, academics, entrepreneurs, and social activists), experiencing firsthand the dramatic changes that transformed the cloth from old-fashioned, rural attire to chic national symbol.

Duponchel worked closely with two of the leaders of the effort to revalorize and preserve this distinctively Malian textile: artist and researcher Kandiora Coulibaly, with whom she collaborated closely in all of her fieldwork, and fashion designer Chris Seydou, who was at the forefront of bogolan's urban, international adaptations. Working with these and other Malian colleagues, the author collected information from artists in numerous villages throughout the country's bogolan-producing regions, including the Beledougou, Fadougou, Djenne, Bendougou, and Bamako regions. She collected one hundred examples of bogolan, often commissioning pieces from the artists she interviewed. The collection was created in collaboration with the Societe des Amis du Musee d'Ethnographie (Neuchatel) and the Musee National du Mali (Bamako), each of which received one half of the collection.

The book's strength lies in the richly nuanced portrait of rural Malian life Duponchel creates through her extensive fieldwork. Wonderful details emerge unexpectedly out of discussions of bogolan production and the cloth's many uses. A discussion of bogolan baby carriers (bamunanfini) includes a description of the practicalities of carrying babies on women's backs--how to secure the cloth, how it might double as a diaper, and how its decoration might hide the inevitable "accidents" that occur with any infant. In her profiles of specific bogolan artists, Duponchel describes the physicality of their work how the artist is seated, where she places her container of mud, how she orients her arm and hand to most efficiently paint the cloth.

Equally close observation is applied to ritual experiences and religious beliefs, echoing the inseparability of the physical and the spiritual realm that characterizes Bamana culture. For example, to address the symbolic importance of earth (the pigment used to create bogolan), Duponchel opens the book by recounting a ceremony she attended in the Kati region called maribaayasa. Newly married young women take part in the ceremony, which is intended to bring them healthy children. Following sacrifice of chickens and kola nut at the foot of a shea butter tree, older women take earth that has received the libations and rub it on the bodies of the young supplicants. As Duponchel describes, "Earth impregnated with blood, millet, and kola nut juice is the necessary ingredient that gives and protects life" (p. 24; translation mine). Her description of the ceremony provides powerful insight into the Bamana world view, far beyond the cloth that is her immediate subject.

Textiles Bogolan du Mali synthesizes a great deal of material, primarily focused on rural bogolan production, though one chapter is devoted to the urban readaptation of bogolan to new uses, such as fashion and home decoration. Duponchel describes the plants and the processes used in creating bogolan pigments; the multilayered meanings of the cloth's iconography; the uses of bogolan wrappers by women as part of initiation and by men as protective garments and dance costumes; the relationship between bogolan motifs, body scarification, henna tattoos, wall painting, and pottery decoration; and the changing nature of the bogolan market. Along with sixty field photographs, including numerous portraits of bogolan artists, and the catalogue of cloths mentioned above (which includes the artists' names and the prices paid for each cloth), the book includes a glossary of Bamana terms, an inventory of motifs and their interpretations, a table of plants and their uses, as well as a bibliography. This last item, the bibliography, is symptomatic of the book's sole weakness its lack of a strong analytical framework. Though she provides a thorough list of sources, the author rarely provides citations, leaving the reader to speculate as to what information was gathered by her and what has already been published. As much as I enjoyed the vivid descriptions and encyclopedic expanse of Textiles Bogolan du Mali, the book was weakened by this lack of a rigorous scholarly foundation. It may be that this emphasis on description was dictated in part by the purpose for which the publication was intended: a documentation of a museum's collections. Whatever the case, with this work as the foundation of her own contributions, Duponchel may still offer us much more from her rich documentation of Mali's artistic heritage. She writes with both sensitivity and an impressive breadth of knowledge--this book stands as an important contribution, and a resource for future analysis of a vibrant art form.