COPYRIGHT AND CITATION CONSIDERATIONS FOR THIS THESIS/ DISSERTATION o Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. o NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. o ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. How to cite this thesis Surname, Initial(s). (2012). Title of the thesis or dissertation (Doctoral Thesis / Master’s Dissertation). Johannesburg: University of Johannesburg. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/102000/0002 (Accessed: 22 August 2017). IDEOLOGY, IMAGERY AND FEMALE AGENCY IN TAPESTRY AT THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH ART AND CRAFT CENTRE, RORKE’S DRIFT, DURING THE SWEDISH PERIOD 1961–1976. A full thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of PhD IN ART HISTORY in the FACULTY OF ART, DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG by PHILIPPA ANNE HOBBS Student No. 215086618 May 2019 The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at, are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF. ABSTRACT Ideology, imagery and female agency in tapestry at the Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre, Rorke’s Drift, during the Swedish period 1961–1976. This study investigates the tapestry practice initiated by two Swedish artists, Peder and Ulla Gowenius, at the Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre at Rorke’s Drift in apartheid South Africa. Following an experimental period at Ceza Mission Hospital in early 1962, and the opening of a craft-therapy project at Umpumulo, the couple established an ambitious weavery at Rorke’s Drift in 1963, which they and their Swedish successors ran until early 1976. Despite the Centre’s popular acclaim, little is known of the Swedish context in which this philanthropic gesture was launched, or the works made by the recipients of their largesse, who were rural isiZulu-speaking women marginalised by apartheid policy, missionary strictures and social convention. In uncovering the context in which a group of Swedish women, the Svenska kommittén för stöd åt afrikanskt konsthantverk (Swedish Committee for the Support of African Art and Craft), imagined a poverty-alleviation project in Africa, I reveal how their notions of ‘rescuing’ vernacular African crafts would prove unworkable, particularly in the light of the apartheid Government’s strategy to tribalise Africans by limiting their access to industrial technologies and promoting ‘native craft’ instead. The pilot project at Ceza and then Umpumulo was an alternative solution that combined inherited and imported technologies, developed through the agency, interaction and adaptation on the part of both the empowered ‘experts’ and the recipients of their knowledge, learnings which would be applied in the new weavery at Rorke’s Drift. Close examination of the tapestries women made there, and the way they worked, challenges homogenising representations of these textile artists as lacking subjectivity and individuality, and reveals how they developed new visual syntaxes through the ‘free weaving’ approach, in which imagery was improvised on the loom. By examining the pedagogic approaches of successive Swedish teachers, I also uncover tensions in the practice between modernist concepts of ‘originality’ and the demands of production. The measures the teachers took to deal with this, and to infuse the weavery with new visual concepts that would appeal to the Swedish market, are closely considered in this study, as are the challenges African women at times mounted to their mentors’ modus operandi. As well as an income-generating project, however, Swedish mentors developed the weavery as a site for artistic education, encouraging women’s independence and critical thinking in a complex environment. Reference to apartheid policy, Lutheran agendas and social practices can be read in number of tapestries. Despite the systems of control that determined weaver’s lives, some of their iconographies ignored restrictions on inherited African practices in the interests of artistic experience. In navigating patriarchy at the Centre, weavers sometimes endorsed men’s ‘authority’ in the tapestries they improvised from their linocuts, while at other times they personalised them. But their most innovative iconographies were drawn from women’s oral knowledge, often articulating covert references to the social and political regimes that defined their lives. This new reading of the tapestry practice at Rorke’s Drift uncovers the role of the loom in the resilience and agencies of marginalised women. i Declaration of Originality I declare that the work contained in this thesis is my own original writing. Sources referred to in the creation of this thesis have been appropriately acknowledged by explicit references. Other assistance received has been acknowledged. I have not knowingly copied or used the words or ideas of others without such acknowledgement. This thesis is being submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for a PhD in Art History at the University of Johannesburg. This work has not previously been submitted to any other university or institution for examination. ……………………………………………….. Philippa Anne Hobbs May 2019, Bryanston, Johannesburg. © Copyright rests with the author ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS….………………………………….….............................vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS…………………………...………………………………viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS………………………………………………………….xvii MAP OF SOUTH AFRICA……………………………………………………………xviii INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………1 Weavers and weavings at Rorke’s Drift………………………………………………………..4 White weavers in South Africa…………………………………………………………………..7 Weaving initiatives among black women: South Africa and beyond………………………..8 LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………………………………………………...10 Pejorative assumptions of origin and influence………………………………………………15 Assumptions of evangelism…………………………………………………………………….18 Notions of superior knowledge………………………………………………………………...20 Constructions of congeniality…………………………………………………………………..22 Regimes of taste………………………………………………………………………………...25 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY……………………………………………………………..…26 METHODOLOGY………………………………………………………………………………..28 Uncovering a Swedish back story……………………………………………………………..29 Investigating intended meanings of tapestries……………………………………………….31 Erasure and the subjugation of knowledge…………………………………………………..35 Understanding the Lutheran context………………………………………………………….36 Bodies of oral knowledge……………………………………………………………………....38 CHAPTER OUTLINE…………………………………………………………………………...40 CHAPTER 1: A SWEDISH BACKGROUND TO AN ART CENTRE 43 ‘Utopia of the everyday’: Vision of a people’s home………………………………………..46 Fogelstad and women’s strategies of advancement………………………………………..48 iii The world as a ‘Folkhem’……………………………………………………………………….51 Help for self-help ………………………………………………………………………………..54 Swedish women in search of Africa …………………………………………………………..55 Mission policies of silence and compliance…………………………………………………..58 Conflicting representations of Afrikafärder …………………………………………………...61 Sara Lidman’s advocacy………………………………………………………………………..63 Broadcasting Berta Hansson’s Afrikaprojekt…………………………………………………65 Shaping a ‘Trojan Horse’ ………………………………………………………………………67 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….70 CHAPTER 2: INITIATING A SWEDISH–SOUTH AFRICAN INTERFACE AT CEZA AND UMPUMULO…………………………………….74 Finding konstmissionärer for a rescue plan ………………………………………………….76 Patterns from an ‘original culture’ ……………………………………………………………..77 Surveying South African hemslöjd …………………………………………………………….79 Ceza Mission Hospital: Encountering apartheid’s craft policy………………………………80 Adapting spinna-färga-väva to Ceza ……………………………………………………….....83 Allina Ndebele, translator and facilitator ……………………………………………………...85 Weaving and visual grammar ………………………………………………………………….86 Tackling Gobelin technology……………………………………………………………………89 Women’s agency and the ‘third profession’ …………………………………………………..91 Umpumulo………………………………………………………………………………………..92 From konstmissionär to ‘missionary’…………………………………………………………..95 Swedish responses to Ceza and Umpumulo weavings …………………………………….97 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………..99 CHAPTER 3: EVOLVING A WEAVING PRACTICE AT RORKE’S DRIFT………………………………………………………………………………………….104 From Umpumulo to Rorke’s Drift …………………………………………………………….105 Recruitment of the first weavers……………………………………………………..............107 Early production and advancement ………………………………………………………….110 Imagery, invention and ‘free weaving’………………………………………………………..113 Making and unmaking Azaria Mbatha’s formspråk in the warp…………………………...116 Style, emancipatory language and The Red Sea …………………………………….........121 Afrikaner Väver and the burden of ‘superior freedom’……………………………………..123 Social art, alliances and The Creation ………………………………………………………126 iv Expansion and self-sufficiency………………………………………………………………..129 Signatures of social convention……………………………………………………………….130 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………132 CHAPTER 4: TOPOGRAPHIES OF LAND, POWER AND TRAUMA IN A MISSION CONTEXT…………………………………………………………………134 Coercion and silence in a border context ……………………………………………………136 Demarcation, division and social complexity in tapestry …………………………………..139 Social exclusion and being ‘over the river’…………………………………………………...141