Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which contemporary South African artists who incorporate beadwork in their artworks challenge spatial and conceptual boundaries between urban and rural art making practices. I suggest that a re-examination of beadwork as a transgressive art making practice is needed.

Paper long abstract:

Beadwork has been made in southern Africa for over 200 years. The artists, who are usually rural women, make adornments that are part of specific cultural ceremonies or that decorate the body. Far from being static, beadwork designs continually change as beadworks artists are influenced by each other, patterns from factory made fabrics, and increasing access to mass produced beads of various shapes and colours.

Contemporary urban-based South African artists such as Liza Lou, Pamela Phatismo Sunstrum and Wayne Barker make use of beadwork, sometimes made by rural beadwork artists, in their artworks. The artworks can be understood as multi-spatial and multi-temporal in their link to both rural and urban art making practices.

This paper explores the ways in which contemporary South African artists who incorporate beadwork in their artworks challenge spatial and conceptual boundaries between urban and rural art making practices.

With reference to historical and contemporary examples, I begin by exploring the ways in which southern African beadwork is continually changing due to various forms of exchange. Then I analyse contemporary South African artworks that incorporate beadwork to uncover the reciprocal impacts of urban and rural imaginaries on contemporary art and beadwork.

I argue that the selected artworks challenge dichotomies such as rural/ urban that are present in established artistic tropes. I conclude that the contemporary artworks are part of the process of continual reinvention and change characteristic of beadwork, and suggest that a re-examination of beadwork as a transgressive art making practice is needed.