South Africa – Mapula Embroidery and Ndebele Village – Tour Day 3
Timeline
We just spent 3 nights up in the mountains (in the Drakensburg) where I didn’t pay for internet. I’m also not always interested in writing a blog post as our days are packed full of activities.
The result is my blog posts and real-time are now quite out of sync. Tour Day 3, this post, occurred on August 4th. I’m going to continue to post the days in order on my blog and not worry they might be a week or so behind reality.
We are in Durban for the next day and then are heading towards some animals where I plan on seeing a lion, even though I’m told that is difficult, which is fine, I still plan on seeing a lion (or 3 or 5).
Mapula Embroidery
Women of the Mapula Embroidery project in their classroom
This morning we drove out to Winterveld to visit the women of the Mapula Embroidery project.
With the help of the Soroptimists the Mapula Embroidery project was started in the early 1990s (before the end of apartheid) with the goal of enriching and empowering the women of Winterveld.
As we drove up the work was hanging on the wash lines waving in the breeze.
The subject matter of the embroideries vary and range from South African animals and plants to politics, health issues (AIDS, cholera, etc) to gender dis-empowerment and male authority. Individual expression is encouraged and the results are quite interesting.
These are some smaller pieces they also had for sale, some were made into cushions but many were not yet finished. The subject matter of these smaller pieces were almost all African animals as they are sold in tourist shops around South Africa.
This is one of the pieces I purchased and the woman that did the work. It was one of only 2 pieces with a white background instead of black and it is much larger than most.
I’m going to write more about about this project after I return home as it is quite interesting and if there is interested I’d like to see if I can bring some of these embroideries to the states and help sell them as it is an excellent project. Although that is something to think about after I return home.
Ndebele Village
In the afternoon we visited a Ndbele Village also near Pretoria.
They had recreated housing in styles over several hundred years, all of which were interesting and I loved the shapes and designs. The traditional Ndbele still paint their houses and we have driven by many of these in our travels.
Misc
A few other photos of from the day:
All of the house photos from the previous post were also taken on this day on the drive up to Winterveld and down to the Ndebele Village
Posted by Lisa in: art adventures
Tagged: africa, empowerment, mapula, ndbele, south africa
Simply amazing!
your post on the work of the women of Mapula is very interesting. would love to be able to see up close. is the work pieced, or embroidered or some of each? cant tell. your other photos are great. thanks lyle
Absolutely magical. Thank you for sharing.
The embroideries are very interesting and i would like a closer view.
What is the name of the artist that made the piece you have bought? Her work is really inspiring.
Oh I love this post
Laura.
VERY cool lisa, thank you so much for sharing your photos. it all seems so colorful and interesting. what great design inspiration, shapes, colors, geometrics. and the land/huts are so inspiring, great natural colors.
Very interesting blog. I just found your site and I have to say this is one I want to follow and keep up with.
Best Wishes,
Tay
Love the traditional buildings! It’ll be interesting to see how all this will influence your work.