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Curator of the
African collection of the Museum fur Volkerkunde (Ethnology)
Wien-Kunsthistorisches Museum in Austria, Barbara Plankensteiner has
again successfully collaborated with the Nigerian National Commission
for Museums and Monuments to stage an exhibition – African Lace: A
history of Trade, Creativity and Fashion in Nigeria. The exhibition
opened in Vienna, Austria on October 22, 2010.

In 2007,
Plankensteiner collaborated with the NCMM and the Oba of Benin to
curate the exhibition, ‘Benin – Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from
Nigeria’; which toured Europe and America for over a year.

Austro-Nigerian fabric

The African Lace
exhibition has been made possible by the support of the Austrian
Embroidery Industry. As exaggeratedly stated in the exhibition book,
“African lace denotes brightly coloured industrially embroidered
textiles that define the image of Nigeria worldwide.” Factually though,
“the specific designs manufactured for the West African market go back
to the early 1960s when commercial relations with the newly independent
state of Nigeria began. Since then, African lace has become extremely
popular in Nigeria and the resulting clothes have been adopted as
traditional dress.”

At the peak there
were many hundreds of embroidery companies in the Vorarlberg area of
Austria. In 2009 despite the global economic crisis 205 companies with
400 machines are in production. 98 percent of their production is for
export; the largest share going to Nigeria. The trade balance in lace
between Austria and Nigeria overwhelmingly favours Austria which has
benefitted to the tune of billions of US dollars while a handful of
Nigerian textile merchants have become stupendously rich. The trade
continues to provide good employment opportunities in both countries.
Austro-Nigerian factories were set up in Nigeria and the few that still
function use old machines and punch-card patterns. Korean and Chinese
lace, though inferior, now flood Nigeria as they are much cheaper.

Lace culture

The history of
lace as a fashion fabric in Nigeria is well explored in the exhibition
book. Earlier imported fabrics like Madras/George and Ankara (with
origins in India and Indonesia) came more than a half-century before
lace which was first used nation-wide as hemming for underwear,
curtains and for blouses in the Niger Delta and Eastern Nigeria before
its massive and definitive incursion into Yoruba culture and Western
Nigeria as the ultimate fabric of chic, opulence, affluence and class.
Lace has endured many social scandals, stigma and upheavals due to
trade bans. It has gone from ridicule as “rich man’s nakedness” to
scorn as the cheap (compared to aso oke) gaudy fabric of the
not-too-classy brash nouveau riche and, distaste; when armed robber
Babatunde Isola Folorunsho was executed in his very expensive wonyosi
lace. Ebenezer Obey, a beneficiary of the lace culture, issued a
special song in defence of lace.

Designing lace

That lace has
become a deliberate fabric of choice to announce and celebrate upward
social mobility all across Nigeria is well reflected in other
non-Yoruba tribal costumes like the utibom/jumper of the Niger Delta
and Eastern Nigeria, now sewn with lace. As part of the exhibition top
Nigerian designers Ituen Basi, Vivid Imagination, Frank Osodi and
Tiffany Amber were given lace materials to fashion out their
contemporary creative styles. The results are simply amazing for daring
and ingenuity.

As part of the
preparatory research, collections of lace attires dating back from the
1970s to the present were assembled for both the Museum of Ethnology in
Vienna and the National Museum in Lagos. These are amply and
beautifully presented in the exhibition book. There is a photograph of
Zik of Africa in a lace outfit in 1979. The viewer is also treated to a
collection of special commemorative lace designs with emblems and
symbols of the ’73 All-Africa Games, Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz,
Peugeot, Wonyosi and more recently Atiku Abubakar!

Exhibition book

The 260-page
exhibition book is a treasure. The front and back covers are designed
with lace embroidery patterns with a cover photograph of Modupe A.
Obebe, reputedly one of the biggest-ever lace dealers, in her
special-lace and damask splendour.

It is edited by
Barbara Plankensteiner and Nath Mayo Adediran, a Director of the NCMM.
There is a Preface by Sabine Haag, Director General of the Austrian
Kunsthistorisches Museum; and another by Yusuf Abdallah Usman, Director
General of the NCCM. Foreword is by Christian Feest, Director, Museum
of Ethnology Vienna who makes the valid observation that, “At present,
an exhibition like African Lace may still be regarded as rather unusual
for an ethnographic museum.”

It is an alluring
book that makes a very good case for the intricate artistic creativity
of embroidered textile, lace, as shown in full-page close-up
photographs that highlight design detail and colour combinations. What
these photographs highlight is contemporary art that has resulted in
close collaboration between Austrian embroidery-pattern designers and
the colour aesthetics of the end-users; Nigerian women in this case.
Two similar successful collaborations come to mind; collaborations that
have been artistically and financially rewarding for both parties. Dame
Mercy Alagoa a well-travelled worldwide buyer for Kingsway Stores as
from the fifties and expert on textiles, recently remarked that intense
research into the colour preferences of Niger Delta women was carried
out before the production of ‘Indorica’ Madras/George fabrics that were
targeted for that market. A master Ghanaian artist and professor also
recalled that in his student days as a textile designer, his Swiss boss
used to take their designs to Mokola Market, Accra, to seek the design
and colour- approval of the market women dealers and users of Ankara
textiles.

Theories of lace

Some of the essays
in the book: ‘Lace in Nigerian Fashion and Popular Culture, An
Introduction’ by Adediran; ‘A Short History of the European Textile
Trade with West Africa by Plankensteiner’; ‘The Art of Dressing Well,
Lace Culture and Fashion Icons in Nigeria’ by Peju Layiwola; ‘Lace
Fashion as Heteroglossia in the Nigerian Yoruba Cultural Imagination’
by Sola Olorunyomi; Party Culture in Nigeria, Interview with Dele
Momodu; Eko for Show, Society Wedding photographs by Adolphus Opara.

Some of the essays
are unnecessarily academic and deliberately oblique. Thankfully, the
exhibits themselves and the many accompanying excellent photographs in
African Lace will tell the whole story, simply, to a much-needed wider
non-academic audience!

The African Lace exhibition is at the Vienna Museum fur Volkerkunde
until February 14, 2011. It will move to the National Museum, Lagos,
from March 21 to June 17, 2011 and then to the National Museum, Ibadan,
from July 27 to October 30, 2011.