The rise of SA’s textile artists

Textile art is experiencing a resurgence. Embroidery, weaving, beading and knitting have long been confined to the realm of craft, regarded as secondary to more traditional fine art such as painting, sculpture or photography. 

A multitude of historical and social biases have colluded to create this misconception, mostly that these practices are thought of only for their functional applications, such as clothing and homeware, and that they have predominantly been women’s work. 

Following World War 2 and the spread of counterculture movements, the 1960s and 1970s brought about a textile revolution where artists across the world explored quilting, tapestry and appliqué to interrogate ideas of gender, race and sexuality. 

The accessibility and approachability of textile art has found favour among millennials and Gen Z since the pandemic, who are sewing and knitting more than ever with TikTok searches for terms like #needlepoint increasing by 400% in 2024, as they look for reprieve from an increasingly turbulent society dominated by generative AI, unending screen time and planned obsolescence. 

Considering the long legacy of textile art in Africa, where cloth has always been used as a form of cultural engagement, documentation and community building, it makes sense that a new generation of African artists is leading the resurgence. The continent is home to household names such as El Anatsui, Mary Sibande and Yinka Shonibare, who’ve paved the way for a new cohort of female SA artists boldly manipulating cloth, thread and bead into subversive and enigmatic works examining post-colonialism, cultural authentication and 21st-century paradox. 

Talia Ramkilawan

Painting with yarn, Talia Ramkilawan’s still lifes and portraits are a testament to the soft power of textile art. Drawing on her queer and Indian identity, the artist employs rug hooking to reconcile the alienation she’s experienced with the prospects of softness, love and restoration offered in the realm of yarn, ribbon and cloth. “I have always believed that disruption does not always to be loud,” she says. “It can be soft and meditative.” Her works are kaleidoscopic in colour, often depicting mundane everyday experiences of eating a bunny chow or picnicking juxtaposed with tweets and text messages. The femmes of her portraits are otherworldly, nodding to her South Asian heritage with multiple arms, pointed ears and blue faces, but grounded in a cheeky take on modern femininity with long, acrylic nails and low-rise jeans. 

Tinyiko Makwakwa

The search for indigenous knowledge systems and ways of being sit at the core of Tinyiko Makwkwa’s various wall hangings, which are often rendered with botanical dyes and local textiles. “It has been too often repeated and reinforced that Africans never or hardly ever recorded or wrote anything down and have an oral history instead of any written archive,” the self-taught, Johannesburg-based artist says. “That African and indigenous people are oral storytellers. But what if those memories and teachings are saved in a way or place that requires us to challenge the way we think about collecting and preserving knowledge?” Her abstract stitching, printing and dyeing hearkens back to the natural landscapes of Southern Africa as she looks to how ideas, feelings and moments can be transmitted through forms beyond written text or spoken word. In the laborious and time-intensive process of producing indigo dye or hand stitching animal skin, Makwakwa can connect to the ancestral legacy through shared practices.

Michaela Younge

Like any young woman, Michaela Younge is obsessed with the passage of time and nostalgia. Her diminutive, needle felted pieces hearken back to the style of kitsch, bric-a-brac that a grandmother would over-accumulate. There’s a delicious irony in Michaela’s use of memes such as the fist-pumping of Nicole Kidman following her divorce from Tom Cruise, making permanent the ephemeral space of pop culture and social media. Balancing Playboy bunnies, Little Red Riding Hood and ageing Cape Town historical architecture in saturated pinks, reds and greens, the artist captures the constant now of the 21st century where past, present and future are always simultaneously happening. 

Mahube Diseko