32
BOTTOM LEFT: Beaded collar.
Kamba, Kenya, 1930–1950.
Glass beads, aluminum or tin-plated wire.
H: 21.5 cm.
Museum Rietberg, Zurich, donated by
François and Claire Mottas, inv. 2017.187.
© Museum Rietberg, Rainer Wolfsberger.
LEFT: Tobacco container, iselwa
seyeza. Xhosa, Mfengu region,
Eastern Cape, South Africa.
1900–1950.
Calabash, wire, glass beads. H: 15 cm.
Museum Rietberg, Zurich, donated by
François and Claire Mottas, inv. 2017.257.
© Museum Rietberg, Rainer Wolfsberger.
ABOVE: Postcard depicting a Zulu
woman, South Africa. 1918.
Photographer unknown.
@ Museum Rietberg, Zurich.
BELOW: Twin fi gures with beaded
mantle, ere ibeji. Yoruba, Oyo,
Igbuke, Nigeria. 1900–1960.
Wood, glass beads, textile.
Museum Rietberg, Zurich, donated by François
and Claire Mottas, inv. 2017.87a, b, c.
© Museum Rietberg, Rainer Wolfsberger.
ABOVE: Andrew Putter
(b. 1965), Anele Mbali as “A
Native Youth,” 2012.
Selenium-toned silver gelatin lightjet
print on fi ber-based paper. 50 x 35 cm.
From the Native Work series.
© Andrew Putter.
TOP: Andrew Putter
(b. 1965), Notyatyambo
Madiglana as “An Initiate,”
2012.
Selenium-toned silver gelatin lightjet
print on fi ber-based paper. 50 x 30 cm.
From the Native Work series.
© Andrew Putter.
MUSEUM NEWS
THE ART OF BEADS IN AFRICA—
THE MOTTAS COLLECTION
ZURICH—Used for exchange and trade, as a covering
for statues, as body ornaments for both men and women,
or on fi gures with sacred charges, beads in Africa
have many denominations and many symbolic meanings.
They were originally produced in Europe for the
African market—in other words, for trade—and in this
sense they serve as a reminder of a colonial past. But
beads were quickly appropriated by African artists and
became an integral part of their works, even if they did
derive from a foreign continent. Their colors and vivacity
made them immediately attractive and popular, but it is
too often forgotten that those colors are actually indicators
of a complex code of identity. Beads carry messages
about the age, gender, and status of the people that
wear them—all messages that this exhibition deciphers
and explains. Beads have had many and varied uses:
They appear on royal Bamileke fi gures and on the necklaces
or bracelets of fetish fi gures, as well as on more
mundane and everyday objects such as ornaments and
jewelry produced by African craftspeople. Beads have
been a vector of globalization visible on the panoply of
objects of which they are part. The fl exibility
of their use is illustrated through the
juxtaposition of traditional beaded objects
that recently came to the Rietberg Museum
from the collection of François Mottas—
a passionate collector who assembled
over 400 African artworks with detailed
documentation—with contemporary objects,
such as a planisphere of worldwide
commercial routes created entirely with
beads by artists Anna Richerby and Laurence
Kapinga Tshimpaka. The exhibition,
which will be open from June 7 until October
21, 2018, makes a special effort to
honor the work of female artists, too long
ignored in the history of the African continent’s
art despite their long having been
such an important creative force there.