I was looking up links for a blog post I was going to write on Yinka Shonibare regarding his work with "African Wax Prints" and I stumbled upon an interesting write-up by Karen Rosenberg for the NY Times. If you are in NY, you should try to check out these exhibits. Here is an excerpt from the article:

To the casual Western eye “African art” equals “African sculpture” — masks, headdresses and ritual figures. As two new exhibitions make clear, this picture is laughably outdated.

Many contemporary African artists would point to textile, rather than sculpture, as the tradition with the strongest impact on their work. The Nigerian-born, London-based artist Yinka Shonibare, for one, has extrapolated an entire career from the fascinating colonial history of the fabrics known as Dutch wax prints.

“The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design Without End,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, presents 19th-century fabrics alongside a few relevant contemporary artworks. Flipping the scales, “The Poetics of Cloth: African Textiles/Recent Art,” at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, emphasizes the place of traditional textiles in works by contemporary African artists.

Click here to read on and here to view the associated slide show.

Grey Art Gallery Press Release
Metropolitan Museum of Art Press Release

Dami @ FR