The Design Indaba
@designindaba • 96,083 subscribers
Design Indaba is an annual conference and making platform with an aim to help create a better world through creativity. A Think Tank and Do Tank since 1995.
Videos
The Design Indaba's curatorial process include us tracking and tracing design and creativity across the various leading universities and design/architectural schools across the world, to explore what the next generation is focused on. At the end of 2010, during our scans for young and emerging creatives, we came across Laduma Ngxokolo's colouful Xhosa knitwear designs. We invited Laduma Ngxokolo to The Design Indaba the following year, in 2011 both as a Conference speaker under the Design Indaba Global Graduates programme and also as a Design Indaba Emerging Creative. Since then Laduma Ngxokolo has gone on to create a global fashion brand, MaXhosa by Laduma MaXhosa AFRICA™. During his talk in 2011, Laduma Ngxokolo inspired the The Design Indaba audience as he shared the beginnings and inspiration behind his design career. He started by redesigning the clothing traditionally worn by Xhosa men upon initiation. His garments were made with Xhosa beadwork and culture in mind, while also using locally produced materials such as wool and mohair. "In my childhood we always had a very traditional upbringing. My mother used to read me Xhosa anthropological books as bedtime stories, and it’s something that I’ve grown up with, that I’m still growing into, and I want to embrace it every way I can," says Laduma Ngxokolo . Ngxokolo prioritises the use of colour in his designs, as this is an important part of Xhosa visual culture. He also utilises local materials with longevity so that the garments can be preserved for future generations. MaXhosa AFRICA™ is a distinctive knitwear brand that is rooted in Laduma Ngxokolo 's journey into creating Xhosa-inspired knitwear. Using traditional Xhosa beadwork motifs and patterns, MaXhosa celebrates the rich heritage of the Xhosa culture through providing traditional clothing for Xhosa initiation rituals. The creations are modern, yet culturally relevant and bring Xhosa aesthetics into any attire. In 2014, The Design Indaba facilitated a scholarship for Laduma to study Masters in Material Futures at Central Saint Martins in London. And in 2016, Laduma won the Design Indaba's Most Beautiful Object In South Africa, for one of his MaXhosa shawls. Watch his full talk The Design Indaba Conference here #LadumaNgxokolo #MaXhosa #AfricanFashion #KnitwearDesign #SustainableFashion #TextileArt
The Design Indaba34,377 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
As the youngest artist to exhibit in the first-ever Ghanaian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Ibrahim mahama is renowned worldwide – both for the scale of his work as well as the way in which it tackles complex and complicated aspects of his country’s past. Best known for his monumental installations, which see architectural structures draped in vast patchworks of old jute sacks, comparable to the work of the great Christo, he is not simply concerned with spectacle. These pieces represent the very fabric of Ghanaian life. Once the leading producer and exporter of cocoa, Ghana’s legacy of commerce is tied to these seemingly innocuous objects. Once they’ve served their purpose in housing cocoa, they go on to live extended lives of usefulness as a means of transporting coal. Ibrahim mahama acquires and reappropriates these materials – integral in the commercial functioning of his country – and examines the methods and processes they play a part in by reimagining their makeup and stitching them back together in new forms. Typically installed in art spaces and public markets, this draping draws attention to the global transportation of goods across borders. His belief in the role of art in not only making symbolic objects but also shifting existing perspectives lends his installations great conceptual strength. “I used jute sacks because the history of crisis and failure is absorbed into the material. Their history speaks of how global transactions and capitalist structures work. Their humbleness contrasts with the monumentality of the buildings they cover,” he explains. Mahama’s affinity for the everyday and discarded object extends further than just the jute sacks he’s become known for. A recent exhibition in Manchester saw the artist bring over dozens of plastic train seats and abandoned wooden lockers for his recent show ‘Parliament of Ghosts’. Watch out for Ibrahim mahama's talk The Design Indaba Conference to be released soon. #IbrahimMahama #VeniceBiennale #ContemporaryArt #CulturalHeritage
The Design Indaba18,912 Aufrufe • vor 11 Monaten
Keine weiteren Inhalte verfügbar