Research

African Scarring.

In Africa scarring is shown as a symbol of strength, fortitude and courage in both men and women. It is a permanent procedure to symbolize beauty and to decorate their body. The process in which they scar themselves involves cutting patterns into their skin. Different tools were used to make these scars.

Scarification effects were valued highly but the procedure was slow and painful, during this procedure it didn't only depend on the artists skill it depended on the person's pain tolerance. If a woman was eager to be scarred she would tolerate the pain and this showed that she had the emotional ability to bear children.

Body and facial scarring's made it possible to identify one tribe from another.

Although the art of scarification has fallen away from Africa different countries still believe that scarring is a way to decorate the body and proceed to do so.

Research

http://rattatattoo.com/top-10-tribal-tattoos/

The History of Tribal Tattoos

Tribal tattoos have existed for centuries, as indelible markings inked into the skin. On every continent, evidence has been found that reveals that tattoos were a part of almost every ancient culture. Tribal peoples all over the world created tattoo cultures independently of each other, which means that each continent has its own unique style of body art. Sometimes these ancient body markings used inks and powders to give the tattoos color, but often the tattoos were a form of decorative scarification.

Tribal tattoos generally consist of thick, dark lines in a dark ink such as navy blue, brown or black. Black ink is the most popular color for tribal tattoos as it creates the greatest contrast, giving the finished tattoo a clean, crisp edge. Tribal tattoos are most popular among men, especially among athletes and fighters. The most common areas of the body to have tribal tattoos inked are the back, chest and arms. Most tribal tattoos are large and masculine, entirely dominating an area of the body. Linear tribal tattoos often don’t work well with other tattoos, and so a tribal tattoo is difficult to cover up or add to. Once the tattoo has been inked, little more can be done to it except to have it removed or to re-ink it and refresh the color.

Research

Tyrone Appollis

Born 1957, Cape Town, South Africa

Tyrone Appollis started his art career as a painter and began sculpting in wood seriously from 1990. Currently he views himself as being a sculptor, painter, print-maker, poet and street musician. He considers political and social reconciliation to be a function of art – art as cross-cultural dialogue. Appollis has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in multi-media. These exhibitions have taken place all over South Africa as well as outside of its borders.

I chose to look at Tyrone Appollis because of the colours used in his work, with him being an African artist I found it helpful noticing that some of the colours he uses I could use for my own work to give it that vibrant feel of Africa. I also enjoy some of his black and white paintings because they have that African symbols within the painting and he has taken markings from the culture and used them in his work.

FMP

FMP

I took symbols from the Adinkra prints and symbols from the tribal prints for my final piece. I did a few samples before I went on to working on my metre of fabric.












Finally after sampling, I created a moodboard

And then moved on to my final piece

Adinkra

http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/tattoos.htm
http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/adinkra_index.htm
http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aaAdinkra.htm

Adinkra Symbology
The Origin and Meaning of Adinkra Symbols

Adinkra is a cotton cloth produced in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire which has traditional Akan symbols stamped upon it. The adinkra symbols represent popular proverbs and maxims, record historical events, express particular attitudes or behaviour related to depicted figures, or concepts uniquely related to abstract shapes. It is one of several traditional cloths produced in the region – the other well known cloths being kente and adanudo.

The Akan people (of what is now Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire) had developed significant skills in weaving by the sixteenth century, with Nsoko an important weaving centre. Adinkra, originally produced by the Gyaaman clans of the Brong region, was the exclusive right of royalty and spiritual leaders, and only used for important ceremonies such as funerals – adinkra means 'goodbye'.

Over time the Asante further developed adinkra symbology, incorporating their own philosophies, folk-tales and culture. Adinkra symbols were also used on pottery, metal work (especially abosodee), and are now incorporated into modern commercial designs (where their related meanings give added significance to the product), architecture and sculpture.

Research

Tinus de Jongh
Born 1885, Amsterdam

Self-taught, he began his career as a decorator in the Netherlands, and then pursued painting full-time. He achieved some note when the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam purchased one of his early pictures. He arrived in South Africa in 1921, the light and landscape of South Africa soon caused him to abandon his muted palette in favour of more saturated colours. His formulaic approach to painting Cape landscapes with gabled farmhouses created such a demand that he abandoned his considered brushwork in favour of a broader palette knife technique.

 

Although Tinus de Jongh's work is completely different to what I did with my work, his really captures the eye and I think that's what inspired me to make my work really powerful to look at. His work is very sharp, and that's exactly what I wanted my work to come across as.

Spider diagram

I made a spider diagram of all the different areas within the African culture to help me with research.

By making the spider diagram it was easier to find what I was looking for and it was easier to help me decide on what was important to research for my fmp fabric.