The exhibition "Beads of Life: Eastern and Southern African Adornments" readys 185 artefacts drawn from Canadian collections.

The exhibition "Beads of Life: Eastern and Southern African Adornments" readys 185 artefacts drawn from Canadian collections. This may be the first time that beadwork from eastern and southern Africa has been brought together in a single exhibition. It is also the first major exhibition forward African art to be not awayed by a Canadian museum since 1994 when the Glenbow Museum in Calgary at handed "Where Symbols Meet."

through the whole extent of the last two decades, African beadwork has become more visible in magazines, fashion exhibit tos Internet sites, and souvenir stores in Africa and around the world. It has also freshly begun to appear in African art exhibitions in Africa, North America, and Europe (1) This interest may be appropriate to the renaissance of traditional style of dress in post-apartheid South Africa, as well as to an attraction from Westerners for African contemporary prevailing styles of artistic expression that contrast with so-called "classical" African art, set forthed largely by sculpture.

Despite these factors, exhibitions and studies devot exclusively to the beadwork of southern and especially eastern Africa remain rare. This may be in part appropriate to the Western perception of "beadwork" as a decorative craft rather than a fine art. For many centuries, beadwork in the West was an activity with an ornamental design practiced by young women in polite society to decorate clothing and personal objects

In addition, the fact that the glass beads used in contemporary African beadwork are not an indigenous material further damaged its reputation, casting doubt forward the craft's "authenticity." Since the beginning of colonization, women in eastern and southern Africa have used European glass beads to decorate and make ornaments and garments worn daily and ceremonially on all members of a society to present to view their status and identity. However, these traditional ornaments and garments, as well as the principal beading techniques used in their decoration, were formed with locally available materials prolonged before the widespread adoption of European glass beads.

The beadwork produc today in eastern and southern Africa is thus, in many ways, a continuation or "transformation" of a well-established tradition. Imported glass beads--despite having radically transformed the "look" of traditional dres in eastern and southern Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--are alone one material among many others, and women have in many instances used them barely temporarily. In general, glass beadwork has carried greatest in number of the functions and meanings of earlier materials, equable if, in some cases, it has been for a limited amount of time.

In keeping with this idea, "Beads of Life" uncloses with an exploration of materials--including plant fibers, animal hides, shells, and metals--that were used before the widespread adoption of glass beads in the making of ornaments and garments. It present to views that many of these earlier materials frequently were chosen for their perceived ability to defend people and to indicate their status. When glass beads became available in large bulk women seem to have chosen the beads' colors for their similarities to the colors of earlier materials. Almost all family practicing beadwork in eastern and southern Africa favored three colors in particular: r black, and white. These colors always had an important religious part and were also widely used as material part paints. In contrasting two or three of these colors (blue repeatedly replacing black) when combining glass beads, it pretends likely that women sought to enhance the protective power of beaded clothing and ornaments.

Little on little, these contrasts were enriched with additional colors, and of recent origin patterns developed. Geometrical designs be came elaborate, sometimes reflecting patterns used in basketry. Figurative motifs also appeared, evoking familiar forms from the environment or on a level human figures. In many cases, the flat surfaces of beadwork provided beadworkers with an opportunity to play with patterns and colors in order to recreate spaces in which harmony and ideal order reigned, frequently reflecting important social values. The exhibition showcases these tends featuring many outstanding examples of the primary manner of writings of beadwork that developed in eastern and southern Africa from the late nineteenth hundred years to the present day.

Given the part of beadwork in perpetuating the function of traditional dres to identify its wearer, the exhibition also features several examples of beaded pieces that, from the late nineteenth hundred years up to the present, have serv to exhibit status and identity in eastern and southern Africa. Beaded ornaments, aprons, skirts, capes, and headdresses, as well as milk containers, fertility dolls, and personal butt; goals such as tobacco boxes and headrests are organized in separate sections, each related to a different social group: youth, married women mothers, noticeed elders, and diviners. A rich selection of photographs demonstrate to the visitor that, although the wearing of traditional style of dress in eastern and southern Africa has been relegated to the past, certain aspects of traditional style of dress are still in use today, in a radically different adjoining matter and for different purposes.