A harmonious world order is conceived through the intermingling of human and floral imagery in a brightly hued tapestry created by the Senegalese modernist Papa Ibra Tall. As founder and lead artist at the National Tapestry Center in Dakar, Senegal, in the early years following independence, Tall produced highly decorative, monumental tapestries dedicated to the celebration of a jazzy African modernism based on pan-Africanist ideals.
At first it is hard to discern the human forms amid the highly decorative vegetation that dominates this composition. Then the eyes adjust to the ways that the central figure's head and hands, and the smaller heads to either side, are composed of the surrounding flora--a visualization suggestive of intellectual engagement in perfect balance with the natural world.
Description:
Tapestry featuring an abstract woman's head and hands, flanked on either side by other female faces looking away from the central figure, amidst a richly decorative floral, leaf/vegetation and spiderweb pattern in bright hues.
Provenance:
Robert S. McNamara, Washington, D.C. - to 1984
Exhibition History:
Conversations: African and African American Artworks in Dialogue - From the Collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr., National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, November 7, 2014-January 24, 2016
Encounters with the Contemporary, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., January 7, 2001-January 6, 2002
Published References:
Kreamer, Christine Mullen and Adrienne L. Childs (eds). 2014. Conversations: African and African American Artworks in Dialogue from the Collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, pp. 203, 212, no. 98, pl. 111.
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