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Janaury Issue 2008
Charleston County Public Library in Charleston, SC, Offers Works by Arianne King Comer
The Charleston County Public Library in Charleston, SC, is presenting the exhibit, IBILE: Messenger of our Ancestry, featuring batik art by Arianne King Comer in the Saul Alexander Gallery, through Jan. 31, 2008.
Fabric artist and dye painter, Arianne King Comer learned the traditional techniques of cultivating and curing indigo for use as a dyeing medium in Nigeria, West Africa, bringing the indigenous African methods of indigo preparation to South Carolina's Lowcountry. Working in historic St. Helena Island, SC, King Comer established her Ibile Indigo Studio on a site that served as a former center of indigo culture and cultivation in the 18th century. She re-contextualized the legacy of this aspect of American slave culture and its political connotations of exploitation and destructive abuse by utilizing the organic, ash-based Nigerian methods of curing the indigo plant instead of the toxic lye-based techniques of the slave system.
Thus, King Comer encourages contemporary awareness
of sustainable, environmentally-friendly methods of dye-making,
which also bear significant feminist and political ramifications.
The economic importance of indigo was a crucial contribution to
the history of the development of the state, and the technology
surrounding its effective production as a cash crop was heavily
dependent upon the labor of enslaved people of African descent.
The Indigo Tree installation created by King Comer is intended
to honor both the indigenous South Carolina Gullah culture and
its antecedent West African "roots". King Comer uses
the tree as a formal metaphor of generation and nurture, while
emphasizing the incorporation of traditional methods of African
craft culture to produce this compelling fine-art application.
Thus, she meshes creative ideas stemming from the African diaspora
across continents and across disciplines, as well as through the
matrix of time.
For further information check our SC Institutional
Gallery listings, call Frances Richardson at 843/805-6803 or visit
(www.ccpl.org).
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