With vibrant pink fringe, ornate patterns, full skirts and sophisticated suits, a new exhibit at the Brooklyn museum showcases the dazzling fashion of Africa. Titled "Africa Fashion," the exhibition features more than 300 works, including fashion, music, film, visual art and photography, as well as textiles and jewelry from the Museum’s Arts of Africa collection. It's the largest-ever presentation of this subject in North America.
Africa Fashion celebrates the creativity, ingenuity and impact of African fashions, from the start of the independence era to today. The show's organized thematically, with sections such as The Cultural Renaissance exploring radical change through fashion and Politics and Poetics of Cloth showing how wearing of Indigenous cloth became a strategic political act. More than 40 designers and artists from 20 African countries are represented, many of whose works are on view for the first time in the United States.
See Africa Fashion through October 22 in Brooklyn. Several events will complement the show, including an art-making session on July 8 where visitors can create a unique pattern through cyanotype printmaking and make a bag using traditional patterns of bògòlanfini (a cotton or wool cloth dyed with fermented mud).
