Artist, educator, curator & researcher · Co-Director, Ponte d’Arte
Community collaboration · Intuthuko × Kris van ’t Hof · Contextile 2020
Two large hand-embroidered panels — Madiba and Ubuntu — made by the Intuthuko Embroidery Collective to designs by Kris van ’t Hof, selected for the Contextile Biennial in Portugal.
Image to come(Missing info)Madiba and Ubuntu are two 180 × 180 cm panels hand-embroidered by the Intuthuko Embroidery Collective — the women’s group Celia de Villiers founded near Johannesburg — over two years, to designs by Prof. Kris van ’t Hof.
The design of each panel is the QR code for its title — Madiba and ubuntu (‘I am because of who we all are’) — the scannable modular grid filled in with embroidered scenes of South African life. Made in commemoration of ten years of South African democracy (2004–2014), the panels were selected as one of 59 works from 870 applicants across 65 countries for the international section ‘Places of Memory’ at the Contextile Contemporary Textile Art Biennial, Guimarães, Portugal (2020). The detail shown is the work of Nomsa Sithole.