Protected?

You may recall how I was oddly inspired by this photo of a priest or diviner's shirt, found in an old design scrapbook and how the song  Do They Know Its Christmas was all over the radio at the time. I got to think about amulets and how they were worn on shirts like this - particularly by the West African Bamana tribe- to protect them from harm whilst hunting. Amulets often have text inscribed in them or an extract of a holy text wrapped up inside them.

Which got me thinking about the plight of those in Africa today who need protection from various forms of pestilence - some natural, many man-made or at least man-exacerbated. AIDS, war, lack of water, lingering post-apartheid poverty. Today there may be less reliance on battered bits of tin to protect and more on International Treaties and Agreements, although one might debate whether the international community is in fact offering much more protection to these people than a battered bit of tin combined with a large dose of faith would.

This quilt uses an eggplant purple batik (which happily has splashes of red wine like spills on the right hand side - or blood like stains if you will!) and a green batik which is only one milli-fraction of a shade brighter than the emeralds on my engagement ring ( both from West Africa - thats the fabrics not the ring) together with some barkcloth. The  barkcloth strips, embellished with traditional amulets of cowrie shells and fabric 'parcels' have been turned on their side to represent scrolls with writing marks in stitch.

Some of these stitches/ 'words' are my western ones. Some are the original stitches which come in the African bark cloth placed there by an indiginous artisan.  A large bead represents the wax seals which authenticate such legal documents.