Fiberworks - A Celebration of South African
Fiber and Textile Artists

Title: African Woman

Description: I asked women to describe South African women in ten different ways and this was their response?

It is very difficult to define the content of my work, because it comes into being through what seems to be a magical process. When I start work, I will often have very little idea of size, shape, colour or content ? there will just be a gem of an idea wriggling away inside me. Things start to grow, mature and transform themselves until eventually a quilt is finished.

Title: Behind the Veil

Description: My quilts are archives of my life that stem from words, travels and my close interaction with women and the secrets they share.

I have a continuing fascination with travel, especially exotic places like North Africa and Turkey. My work is a synthesis of memories and observations that celebrates these special places and people that inhabit them.

I read these words at the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakesh and it inspired me to make Behind the veil:

"Embroidery is the living evidence of ancestral traditions and of the flourishing imagination of Muslim women. Thus needlework, keeper of innermost secrets, is a hymn to patience, harmony and intimacy.

Title: White Hands

Description:

Title: Amulet for the Helpless

Description: I have made an amulet to protect women (the helpless) against the 10 deadly sins against women. Rape, HIV/AIDS, discrimination, menopause, aging, poverty, mental and physical abuse, multiple pregnancies (no access to contraceptives), cellulite and obesity.

Title: Who's life are you living?

Description: The freedom to live one's own life is a universal aspiration, more than that a right. But most people live with a feeling that something is stopping them from being authentic.

Title: The Secret Life of Carrots:

Description: The idea of what lies beneath fascinates me, We must not confine ourselves to the surface, We must learn to see what lies beneath the surface.

Title: Feathers on the Water:

Description: I love Khoi-fishes

Title: Flowering Coral:

Description: The pantone colour of the year CORAL was my inspiration.

Title: Silk Twirling Beads:

Description: Beads made from silk fabric and silk yarns in various colours.

Title: Decay

Description: For Anselm Kiefer the sunflower symbolizes the cycle of life :
"The moment they explode they are yellow and fantastic :that"s already the declining point. So, sunflowers are a symbol of our condition d"etre.

Title: Kissing the shoreline

Description: "There is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refused to stop kissing the shoreline doesn"t matter how many times it is sent away

Elaine Barnard