International Folk Artists Preserve Cultures & Create Opportunities
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The Extraordinary Stories Behind The Extraordinary Art
More than 170 master folk artists from 52 countries, representing a multitude of cultures and techniques, will be coming to the seventh annual Santa Fe International Folk Art Market on July 9-11, 2010. They will bring with them powerful stories about the impact that creating and selling their art has had, as the following examples show.
The Artist: Rebecca Lolosoli
The Region: Northern Kenya
The Medium: Hand-strung beaded jewelry
Economic self-sufficiency is a first step in fighting the marginalization and abuse of women in the developing world.
For the second year, Rebecca Lolosoli will bring to the Market beautiful beadwork made by the semi-nomadic, pastoral Samburu (butterfly) people of northern Kenya, named for their traditional face paint, which is reminiscent of colorful butterflies. The Samburu women are among the most marginalized groups in Kenya today, and Ms. Lolosoli, a prominent activist and artist, went so far as to found a village for abused and homeless Samburu women. The women of Umoja, as the village is called, are educated on issues such as domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, and forced female genital mutilation, and taught how to create sustainable livelihoods through jewelry-making.
Details of the art: In traditional Samburu beaded jewelry, different designs denote a person’s age, while the bead colors reflect specific meaning. For example, white symbolizes women’s milk; red represents blood; and green reflects blessings and prayers.
The Artist: Kakuben Jivan Ranmal
The Region: Gujarat, India
The Medium: Fine embroidery
Folk art sales empower mothers and keep families together
Kakuben Jivan Ranmal, an embroidery artist from the town of Patan, India, will be making her first appearance at the Market. Together with two other female embroidery artisans from India, she will be representing the group known as SEWA Trade Facilitation Center (STFC). The Center was formed in 2003 by more than 15,000 women artisans from the desert region of Gujarat, in western India. STFC aims to empower poor women financially, helping them to create livelihoods for themselves and their families by selling their traditional embroidery. Before joining the STFC, Ms. Ranmal had been forced to leave her nine-month-old child with relatives while she searched for low-paying, menial jobs far from home. Now she and the other artisans of the STFC work from their homes and are shareholders in the organization.
Details of the art: India’s cultural vibrancy has long been expressed through its arts and crafts. Every region has its own style and pattern of folk
art, and that art speaks volumes about the country’s rich heritage. The Gujarat women’s exquisite technique involves attaching tiny mirrors to the fabric with colorful threads in floral and figurative designs. Traditionally, the pieces would form a woman’s dowry.
The Artist: Hind El-Arabi
The Region: Palestinian Territories (Gaza Strip)
The Medium: Cross-stitch embroidery
Folk art sales can bring fiscal and emotional relief to refugees and help preserve the traditions of their homeland.
Today, nearly 500,000 Palestinian refugees occupy camps in the Gaza Strip. Hind El-Arabi, a Palestinian embroiderer, is working with 500 women in the Gaza Strip to create a business from their traditional embroidery. This year, for the second time, she will bring their work to the Market. Last year Hind was overwhelmed by the interest in her people and their art.
Details of the art: Although the Palestinian cultural landscape has changed dramatically in the last 50 years, cross-stitch embroidery remains a vibrant art and the principal decoration on rural women’s clothing, as well as a source of great pride for the embroiderers.
The Artist: Dr. Magdalena Martinez
The Region: Oaxaca, Mexico
The Medium: Ceramic figures clothed in traditional dress
Folk art isn’t static; traditional crafts, such as costumes, can be celebrated and expanded upon through sophisticated new folk art forms.
A practicing physician by profession and a ceramicist by training and inclination, Dr. Magdalena Martinez is a nationally celebrated artist in Mexico. She creates beautiful ceramic figural sculptures, most dressed in the traditional costumes of Oaxaca. Using extensive research, Dr. Martinez immortalizes clothing traditions that were in danger of being lost to time and memory. Her particular favorite
is the flamboyant costume of the Tuxtupec region of Oaxaca, with its vividly colored fabric and ribbons. Dr. Martinez’s own work has been strongly influenced by her family roots: Her father was a well-known regional ceramist and it was his pieces that first sparked her interest in the form. At the time, Dr. Martinez’s grandmother was still alive and the young Magdalena peppered her with questions about the native dress of her youth. Today, few records of those traditional costumes survive—except in Dr. Martinez’s distinctive, graceful figurines.
Details of the art: Each figurine begins with a face, which Dr. Martinez sculpts from local clay. Then she creates the torso, the scaffolding for the all- important costume, by flattening a length of clay like a tortilla and folding and forming it into a body shape. A traditional skirt and blouse, accurate in every detail, are pressed onto the torso, with the arms, legs, and adornments added last. Finally, the works are fired, creating a lasting monument to the women and style of Oaxaca.
The Artist: Jabulile Nala
The Region: KwaZulu Natal, South Africa
The Medium: Hand-coiled and painted clay pots
Folk art binds together generations and allows mothers to pass along not just a tradition, but a livelihood to their children.
For Jabulile Nala, pottery is both a legacy and a lifeline. She was taught by her grandmother, Simphiwe, and her mother, Nesta Nala. Nesta’s pots are in museums and prestigious private collections worldwide, and Jabulile continues in her mother’s footsteps, making exceptional pieces that are also now in museum collections. Despite creating pots of almost unearthly grace, she and the other traditional potters of the KwaZulu region struggle to make a living. Almost a quarter of the population is out of work and living on less than $2 a day.
Details of the art: Zulu pots are created from clay dug from local riverbanks, dried, mixed, and hand ground. The pots are built slowly, with potters painstakingly coiling lengths of the clay and laying one coil atop the next. Each pot is decorated in patterns using an astonishing array of local tools, from knives and stones to corncobs and even umbrella spokes; they are then fired in open pits burning aloe leaves. Traditionally, the pots, beautiful as they are, were used casually for drinking, storage, and cooking— or for offering beer to the gods.
The Artists’ Representative: Rangina Hamidi
The Region: Kandahar, Afghanistan
The Medium: Fine-needle embroidery
Trade, not aid, can bring substantial and sustainable change to disenfranchised women.
When Rangina Hamidi was four years old, her family fled Afghanistan for America, but Ms. Hamidi never forgot her homeland. After earning a degree in religion from the University of Virginia, she returned to Afghanistan and managed the Women’s Income Generation Project with Afghans for a Civil Society. At the time, many Afghani families had no alternative but to become involved in the dangerous and illegal trade in poppies (for heroin). Ms. Hamidi helped the families to revive traditional embroidery, a cultural heritage almost lost in the days of the Taliban, when women couldn’t leave their homes. Afghans for a Civil Society became a way for women to safely support their families, while at the same time satisfying deep and long-repressed creativity. The embroidery, which Ms. Hamidi helps to market and sell, provides income for the artists and is helping to fund literacy, healthcare, and grass-roots political training for many women. The project has been so successful that Hamidi has started a for-profit business called Kandahar Treasure that will offer even more opportunities for these women.
Details of the art: The women of Kandahar make a special kind of fine-needle, exquisitely detailed embroidery known as khamak that features rich colors and elaborate, geometric designs. “This work is a way for the women of Kandahar, once so marginalized, to engage once again with the world.” Ms. Hamidi says.
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More information
Artists are available for interviews before and during the Market. Contact Clare Hertel Communications at 505-474-6783 or email .
A complete list of the participating Market artists, as well as their stories, will be available in February on this website
