The Mantis Wedding: Performing Power in the Loom

Abstract

In 1980 the South African tapestry artist, Allina Khumalo Ndebele (Fig. 1), sat down at her loom to weave The Mantis Wedding (Fig. 2).1 She had recently left the relative security of her job as a weaving trainer at the Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre at Rorke's Drift, in what is now KwaZulu-Natal. Her departure from the center would gain her a form of freedom she had not previously known: the option to weave tapestries of her own. Over the next twenty-five years she would produce around 100 such narrative works at her new venture, Khumalo's Kraal Weaving Workshop.The subject matter of Ndebele's tapestries, as well as those of a few of her trainees, evolved largely in the form of woven retellings of iZinganekwane, the inherited oral narratives popularly referred to as “folktales,”2 customarily told by senior women in isiZulu-speaking3 families. By focusing on Ndebele's The Mantis Wedding in this essay, I consider some strategies of this orality-inspired genre of tapestries in the northern Zululand region and the agency of the women who made them.The Mantis Wedding is largely unknown to art audiences. It was acquired by Charmaine and Jonathan Keep in 1985 and has since been in their collection in the United Kingdom.4 Based on an iNganekwane, this is a complex tapestry that Ndebele considers a milestone in her personal experience. It deserves acknowledgment, as well as contextualization within the body of tapestries made at Rorke's Drift and Khumalo's Kraal.Little scholarly literature has examined tapestries as reiterations of iZinganekwane and their covert meanings. My short article, “Apartheid Among Animals and the Unravelling Story” (2004: 66–67) broached this possibility by suggesting that Ndebele's comical tapestry, Animal Meeting (1993), was embedded with reference to white rule. Peder Gowenius's foreword in Rorke's Drift: Empowering Prints (Hobbs and Rankin 2003: xiv) discussed an earlier tapestry by an unknown weaver, The Hungry Lion (c. 1965), as a source of relief from political oppression through its retelling of a known story. Elizabeth Rankin and I considered this work further in our (unpublished) 2009 paper, “(En)gendering Resistance: The Tapestries and Prints of Rorke's Drift.”But there have been more disruptive tapestries than these few instances; I will argue that shared ideas from iZinganekwane have presented novel vocabularies with which weavers have contested power. More specifically, I aim to show how The Mantis Wedding and other tapestries draw on a “swallowing” theme, known to local women through inherited stories.In examining erasures associated with this body of works, I consider how the marginalization of these weavers and the silencing of their “voices” in tapestry can be ascribed to infantilizing perceptions of female oral art as picturesque “folktales.” I also argue that functionalist understandings have represented women's voices as endorsements of social cohesion. Instead, I propose that some tapestries have evolved as performative engagements with concepts of power and as a means of personal survival.From the early 1960s Allina Ndebele assisted Swedish art-school graduates Peder and Ulla Gowenius to build a flourishing concern, which was permanently established in 1963 under the aegis of the Church of Sweden Mission at Rorke's Drift. Here they developed an art and craft advisors course, then weaving, fabric printing, and ceramics workshops, as well as a fine art school.5 As the economic driver of the Centre, the weaving workshop employed local isiZulu-speaking women (and a few men) to produce figurative tapestries,6 geometric rugs, and other articles. But having taught carding, spinning, dyeing, and weaving to Rorke's Drift recruits for years, by 1978 Ndebele felt familiar enough with the technical and administrative processes developed by the Goweniuses to start a workshop of her own.7The Rorke's Drift weavery had produced utilitarian products in striking geometric designs, but it had also introduced local women to a form of bildvävning (literally “image weaving” or “free weaving,” as the Swedes called it in English), an interpretative pictorial approach that would characterize the tapestries over twenty years or more at Rorke's Drift (Fig. 3). Akin to expressionist styles of Western modernism, these large works (of up to five meters in width) were generally woven up from small sketches, in an open-ended manner that did not depend on a limiting design guide, or “cartoon,” traditionally placed behind the warp in the gobelin looms of Europe (Fig. 4).The Goweniuses had not necessarily aimed to impart modernist styles of expressionism to Africa.8 Rather, they considered figurative weaving the appropriate modus operandi for local women in silenced communities to voice their opinions and aspirations. They encouraged weavers to draw on their own experiences as a means of self-actualization, urging them to “speak” in a personalized visual vocabulary, or bildspråk, as they have referred to it (for a fuller discussion of this concept in the Rorke's Drift context see Hobbs and Rankin 2003: 163). Allina Ndebele's new weaving venture, Khumalo's Kraal Weaving Workshop, would adopt this pictorial approach (Figs. 5–6). She would likewise provide employment for destitute women—including her own mother, Rosta Khumalo—whom she trained to card, spin, dye, and weave (Figs. 7–8).Ndebele's return to Ekuhlengeni mission (Fig. 9)9 in late 1977 to initiate this venture would mean an uncertain life as an artist-weaver. At this remote place in the Swart Umfolozi region of what is now KwaZulu-Natal, the odds were against her managing to establish an independent production studio and art career as a black woman when she had no access to electricity, transport, telephone, or funding. Moreover, Ekuhlengeni was then an authoritarian environment, despite the hopeful meaning of its name as a “place of rescue” or “salvation.” As Ndebele points out, customary male authority in isiZulu-speaking communities decreed that a woman should move to her husbands homestead upon marriage. Ekuhlengeni missionaries endorsed this custom, deeming it unnecessary to grant a woman a site on which to build a home or keep cattle. The fact that Ndebele and her children had been abandoned by her husband made little impression on them, probably because they regarded her subsequent divorce as a failure “to resist the difficulties of marriage.”10 She therefore had to build her first workshop on the property of her father, Caleb Khumalo.Quite apart from these constraints, apartheid presented obstacles and aggravations of its own. Ndebele remembers, for example, the risk she ran by ordering building materials on the telephone at the home of her white friend, Tekla Heyneke, where she would enter through her front door rather than the back, as a servant was expected to do. In the conservative white farming community in the Swart Umfolozi region this dangerous behavior that suggested a personal friendship between two women of different races could easily attract unwanted attention from the police.In 1987 Ndebele was finally granted a site of her own on which to expand her venture. But baffled mission authorities would soon complain about the thatched, circular structure she commissioned for it, arguing that this traditional style of dwelling, which they associated with “heathen” beliefs, could hardly be considered a workplace. But as a replica of the home of her grandmother, Zihudele MaZulu Mhlongo, this space was to be a mnemonic aid that would facilitate Ndebele's recall of the iZinganekwane the old lady had once taught her (Fig. 10). She found she could recall Mhlongo's voice when she rested inside this structure, taking snuff prepared according to the senior woman's recipe to facilitate a heightened state of reception. In this way Ndebele reassembled a repertoire of oral narratives that would inform her tapestries.11Ndebele's concept-formulation process was not unlike that of other rural artists in the KwaZulu-Natal region, some of whom have similarly stated that their ideas evolved through noncognitive means. Allen F. Roberts (2001: 44) has cited some instances, notably the KZN HIV/AIDS Awareness Project workshops, initiated in 1999, where women elected to “dream” their ideas before they made beaded dolls and narrative tableaux.Although story in The Mantis Wedding was one of many that Mhlongo had related to Ndebele, it predated the building of the thatched replica. But it seems to have been a significant early work, in which she was still discovering the potential of iZinganekwane to inform her iconography. Ndebele certainly speaks of this work as a milestone in her personal survival as a marginalized woman.12 The story tells of a handsome bird called Nogolantethe, who falls in love with a mantis and asks her to marry him. But on the wedding day when all the mantis's insect guests had assembled, the bird-groom beheld his beautiful bride and realized: “It's our food, this!”—upon which he ate her.13 Then, as Ndebele wrote, “this started the other birds off on the same trend and they devoured all the small animals and insects and that was the end of the wedding” (Ndebele 2011: 11) (Fig. 11).Ndebele has depicted the sacrificial venue as a congested space, indeterminate in time and place. Even though we know from her written and oral versions of this story that the event was staged on a mountain top, there is no vista described here, and depth is only indicated by a profuse overlapping of clutter: disheveled birds, insect fragments, and broken foliage. She has captured the moment when a flock of advancing guests (on the left) are readying themselves to follow the groom's example and pounce on the insects beyond the mantis bride. The clearing in the middle of the scene of disorder acts as a framing device for the iconic centerpiece of the story, the ravenous Nogolantethe tearing at his hapless victim.That he should begin by gorging on his bride's head is quite ironic in view of the fact that, in the natural world, mantis females cannibalize their male partners' heads during courtship. But here in the domain of Ndebele's warp it is the defenseless bride's own head that is eaten. Nor has Ndebele awarded the Mantis its natural means of survival: the feelers, elongated thorax, wings, and the raptorial forelegs in usual praying attitude. Furthermore, the spines that line a mantis's legs have been displaced to its back to the tapestry is a of its and its means of The bird Nogolantethe, on the other has some as his with is also by a the means Ndebele to that he with because of his that to this did not love the he was to Mantis Wedding be by some as an that should place within appropriate But Ndebele the story to a personal at a time of It is an of social and the of a the upon whom the birds have In a of for her 1985 at Art where The Mantis Wedding was Ndebele described the of by the mantis her this more on a to I know I Khumalo or Ndebele because I inside his But weaving up this story the she had her to this of and of As she made recently how she found this between the story of the mantis and her personal she had started the work in the local a who had a of in on the new tapestry and that it was to a local story. on this to Ndebele to her as had a mantis Her reference to Ndebele's the as and she developed the tapestry as an for this of her back on this manner of meaning in her work, Ndebele recently how a with a could a process of her in the warp and how she was to the of the tapestry to the new the means of her is the of story Ndebele a known by an to its usual the of a a that (Fig. the only to the wedding in Her for this story at the is It the tapestry not only her at her it also an from the scene of In this way Ndebele an of through the of a that and It is an she would in tapestries such as The of (Fig. As for the the she that, when love it is the broken at the of the there are many mantis still in this where we are (Fig. story of The Mantis Wedding some with one of the in women's oral narratives in referred to by as a “swallowing” theme, has in on iZinganekwane since the and over many have been by the of female of the is that of the woman who her in a to and according to the isiZulu-speaking in his and of the that her as well as animals and have been by a referred to as but she it by it then a of its for and her are other in iZinganekwane that the survival of at the of is of the of the who is a of all of the tells of a woman who her and to her to the devoured by a Her it through its which the its and all the and animals “swallowing” in they that more than and the In The in South of the a large that the could not in the form from one end to the It all for one female who to a he the by the to then a way for the of to In many of these some of social or personal a new social is and a woman is for a of have In his In the of The of South how of have been by to and social the of white that off their The that from to the is depicted as a that and But the of and is the of white South “swallowing” would its way a loom at Rorke's Drift in the with the weaving of The Hungry Lion (Fig. work a story with which Gowenius down when the work was Hungry Lion was more than a the weavers told but an reference to the on the of local It depicted an that devoured the a as he was who who their a little But the was that the and back up would the weavers as for the he would to in the the was their Here the weavers the “swallowing” with an ironic to and through the attention of the Gowenius in his these when they are to a state of The story be told in the of the but he not the it as a Swedish of Rorke's Drift regarded this as an of it, the Goweniuses have they to consider their in South not as rural but the means by which their agency could be As they this work was It from to a such as these on understandings of to the voice more in the this was despite the fact that this tapestry with its in of its The produce a that it to and But such can also was at work in The Mantis for example, where the insect are by this that their the impression that these have little of on the around In this way the of the warp further that or expand the narrative in the years The Hungry Lion and The Mantis Wedding are two that not provide to the but power and the work by the of and the by a woman's personal survival of and of female with in the of the who that social according to the authority of and male heads of covert of female In The of a South African women's not as but as a of social on to consider these oral narratives as of against a of against and the possibility that they an to a state of where the will have his Hungry Lion and The Mantis Wedding were not the only tapestries to appropriate the ravenous of short about a mantis wedding is one of written up on the back of a production for the of this seems to have been at Rorke's was probably as a of departure for a tapestry made by in the It be that work was a for but the did not tapestry when a of it, and in the two tapestries have few visual in Ndebele's is on the the of the more visual a of and a large But it is that, though Ndebele her of this story to her grandmother, she well have been of its potential as a tapestry subject from having early work made at Rorke's Drift that seems to an a a (Fig. The Hungry this tapestry is by a that of the pictorial white has to an by a black the of the in an But there is some in their one the to the but it could also be as the white forelegs the head in a as its body a about this Gowenius associated the with meaning its weavers to with him. The weavers I recently who were at Rorke's Drift at the time the work was could not name its weaver, but it represented an They also it that it some covert it that the white the of that these of to to political of The weavers also attention to the of in the who are indicated as rather than the more usual white a to their as as these tapestries draw on a genre of iZinganekwane, they also from that have developed around women's oral In the and to in the of is an the of a oral in that within an In a discussion of concepts in and of the shared her that has not in the same as She therefore felt to that the of female in Rather, she to a were the of of on such as from by have to oral narratives as of an as in the foreword to this would in be to the of Rorke's Drift tapestries, many of which to their as of or from local and of the of Rorke's Drift works at South African in described the tapestries as of and animals in all of the and on how they a of life around the the works as the of and of the tapestries to a this has little scholarly attention and the tapestries have been and It could also for the on these works in In of all the isiZulu-speaking women who have made tapestries at Rorke's Drift and Khumalo's Allina Ndebele has been the only one to more than from of women's voices in tapestry can probably be ascribed also to functionalist of female as of social of In South this concept was in the of in the which that women's were which the of a The of women's as a of in the in in the and have also to that the inherited of was The of than from the of South during the late 1960s seems to have encouraged this rather did not this and did in fact that he these at was once the disruptive and apartheid by and have this custom, at in the Rorke's Drift weavers in the are certainly familiar with iZinganekwane, which from senior but they not recall a of the as for tapestries were in a picturesque for example, that they to of iZinganekwane when they were employed at the Centre, as it them with a source of new tapestry when the own children to in the iZinganekwane were in notably the by some of the and in this were of for example, the story of and an by of a and the of from this their traditional the of their that she a which she have been the source of some of her ideas for It is also that the of iZinganekwane in the Rorke's Drift were from of tapestries made at Rorke's Drift and Khumalo's Kraal did of a and by such as of The Rorke's Drift production for many But not all Rorke's Drift works can be to have been and of tapestries to be in the of the disruptive social in The Hungry Lion and The Mantis As such as have out, is in many iZinganekwane The South African and has he he was not at to before the of that the survival of communities could be to of in many of these inherited that the did not see was that the of these was the Instead, women's has been a means of white and in narratives has been a against that in oral the of the has been an of and of through a of power. the of such we are with the of is all the more in view of the fact that rural isiZulu-speaking women in the KwaZulu-Natal region have disruptive social in other of as was the which was the of a of HIV/AIDS in KwaZulu-Natal around how as or could be an for on the of women by the of but who are at the same time silenced by of social and be a means of the narrative tapestries of Rorke's Drift and Khumalo's which some with means of In weaving and story are in an open-ended the on the narrative or new of are and of as are the on personal ideas to the with a of and In Ndebele's tapestry could be a and means of the world, the an of of of a story the on a narrative repertoire to and such as and to the story. form of for example, in the of as of of a (Fig. It is that such between and interpretative pictorial tapestry have women Ndebele to narratives in more and that such in for the and of these between visual and oral of course, is the of in the between and are to in the form of and But not be a of tapestry, the were social work and tapestries were the subject of as they a work at Rorke's Drift, for example, the would her subject matter with the who would a of one would a story to the workshop and would be to a two or weavers would at a loom for to keep the the this in discussion of visual Furthermore, to the worksho

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