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Provenanced

A digital exhibition that celebrates African and Indigenous contributions to western visual languages and design culture.


Written & Curated by Tariq Dixon | Images by Form und Rausch

African, Indigenous, and Oceanic artworks first entered the western imagination in the late 1800s, extracted by European imperialists whose conquests stretched from Sub-Saharan Africa to the South Pacific. Regarded as mere curios or ethnographic artifacts, these works were largely discarded to pawn shops and flea markets littered across Europe. However, they’d realize new value to the western world once a fledgling artist named Pablo Picasso sees a Gabonese Fang mask hanging on the wall of fellow artist Andre Derain's studio, and when a Vili Nkisi sculpture from the Congo catches the attention of Henri Matisse from a pawn shop window on Paris’s Rue de Rennes.¹


“They saw what they took to be free creative interpretation of nature, totally unrestricted by the canons of realism, and saw how their own art could be freed,” ² notes the late scholar Frank Willet. They became inspired by “the sense of exceptional vigor that simple lines confer,” ³ forever evolving how the western world would consider and appreciate form.

<p><a href="/products/vintage-grebo-mask" title="Vintage Grebo Mask">Grebo Mask from the Ivory Coast</a></p>

Grebo Mask from the Ivory Coast

Despite this newfound embrace, these works would not be exempt from colonialist processes of absorption, erasure, and revisionism. Art historians would collectively group these diverse artforms - developed by innumerous cultures over centuries of evolution - into a monolithic category: primitive art, art negre (used even to describe works of Oceania or America), tribal, or art premier - the moniker changed over time, but the Darwinian implications remained constant.

As the objects and their forms entered the visual discourse, they were often decontextualized-universalized in a way that ignored their original meanings and contexts, giving way to limited readings. Because of a gross lack of understanding, framed within the power dynamics of the colonial project, African art often evoked an undifferentiated blackness, a backward culture, an innate spirituality, and unsophisticated but compelling forms. - Adrienne L. Childs ⁴
<p><a href="/products/vintage-ethiopian-jimma-chair" title="Vintage Ethiopian Jimma Chair">Vintage Ethiopian Jimma Chair</a> | <a href="/products/partera-chair" title="Partera Chair">Partera Chair</a></p>

Vintage Ethiopian Jimma Chair | Partera Chair

<p><a href="/products/nyala-chair" title="Nyala Chair">Nyala Chair</a></p>

Nyala Chair

The provenance afforded to western artists - including those “avant-garde” modernists who directly turned to these “primitive” cultures as their primary sources of inspiration - is denied to African and Indigenous creators. Western scholars used imagined histories to intellectualize anonymity, claiming a “tribal” ethos of anti-individualism ⁵, allowing the consequences of theft and erasure to masquerade as cultural truths. Even today, these unattributable works deem their market value not by their age, origin, or creator, but by their lineage of white owners.⁶

Turn-of-the-century art nouveau and art deco movements would likewise embrace foreign cultures, albeit differently. Aesthetics of the Orient, Arabia, and Africa - adopted across fashion, architecture, and furniture alike - would become fetishistic symbols of exoticism and worldliness, yet similarly devoid of any context or cultural understanding. Take Carlo Bugatti, Victor Courtray, and Pierre Legrain as prominent examples.
<p><a href="/products/segment-highback-dining-chair-in-kuba-inspired-fabric" title="Segment Highback Dining Chair in Kuba-Inspired Fabric">Segment Dining Chair in Kuba Inspired Fabric</a></p>

Segment Dining Chair in Kuba Inspired Fabric

A century from when the Gabonese Fang mask first captivates Picasso and he later catapults to ubiquity, have we truly freed ourselves from these colonialist constraints that denied African and Indigenous artists of this same agency?

PROVENANCED was born as a small attempt to honor the depth, diversity, and persistence of these contributions by African and Indigenous artists, however obscured they may now be. By placing contemporary designs, produced by a diverse set of global designers, alongside vintage African works, the visual seamlessness makes these historical relationships boldly apparent.

From Room Studio’s Pomegranate Chair that honors the designers’ native Soviet culture meanwhile hearkening to Ethiopian Jimma furniture - to Ben & Aja Blanc’s Apollo mirror that takes cues from African artforms by way of derivative western art movements - the selected works convey the breadth and depth of these cultural influences, some more immediately referential and others several degrees of separation removed.
<p><a href="/products/vintage-ibibio-mask" title="Vintage Ibibio Mask">Vintage Ibibio Mask</a></p>

Vintage Ibibio Mask

<p><a href="/products/vintage-lobi-chair" title="Vintage Lobi Chair">Vintage Lobi Chair</a></p>

Vintage Lobi Chair

This exhibition does not intend to offer a prescription, but create an opportunity for dialogue.

What would it mean to establish a canon of African and Indigenous inspired design that exists outside a colonial legacy of extraction and appropriation? In the absence of historically popular, yet wrought and mis-characteristic terms like “tribal” and “primitivism,” how do we develop new terminology to appropriately describe these visual languages and material cultures? What does one aim to signify when using cultural artifacts as decoration without a sincere interest in their origin stories? How can we as designers engage more critically with our inspirations and sources? How can the industry work to better recognize and respect diasporic traditions?

As a starting point, I've invited each participating designer to respond, in their own words, to the topics that this exhibition explores. I encourage you to read each one below.
<p><a href="/products/pomegranate-chair" title="Pomegranate Chair">Pomegranate Chair</a> | <a href="/products/baule-mask" title="Baule Mask">Vintage Baule Mask from the Ivory Coast</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="/products/ines-chair" title="Ines Chair">Ines Chair</a></p>

Pomegranate Chair | Vintage Baule Mask from the Ivory Coast | Ines Chair

<p><a href="/products/apollo-mirror" title="Apollo Mirror">Apollo Mirror</a> | <a href="/products/segment-highback-dining-chair-in-kuba-inspired-fabric" title="Segment Highback Dining Chair in Kuba-Inspired Fabric">Segment Dining Chair in Kuba Inspired Fabric</a></p>

Apollo Mirror | Segment Dining Chair in Kuba Inspired Fabric

Through this process, I’ve also realized my own limitations - the real lack of nuance in understanding each of these rich and diverse cultures, and leaning into the same tendencies of monolithism and vague generalities.

I’ve also realized that this teaches us lessons more broadly applicable. The historical treatment of African and Indigenous artworks reveals human impulses to process foreign cultures through one's own worldviews - absorbing what one values, and discarding what one doesn't along the way.

To quote art historian John Warne Monroe, “[Art] has the power to be both redemptive, a means of overcoming the past and making the richness of very different cultural worlds visible to one another; and oppressive, imposing a metropolitan set of meanings on peoples deemed “peripheral.” ⁷

By confronting, learning, and evolving from our sometimes sordid histories, we have the opportunity to elect the former over the latter.

Sources

1. Yves Le Fur, Through the Eyes of Picasso: Face to Face with African and Oceanic Art (Paris: Flammarion, 2017), 22-23.

2. Frank Willett, African Art (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002), 136.

3. John Warde Monroe, Metropolitan Fetish: African Sculpture and the Imperial French Invention of Primitive Art (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2019), 65.

4. Adrienne L. Childs, Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition (New York: Rizolli Eclecta, 2019), 27.

5. Monroe, Metropolitan Fetish..., 55.

6. Monroe, Metropolitan Fetish..., 42.
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Dona Lamp

Ben & Aja Blanc

" The making of the Apollo Mirror began with the formal interest in juxtaposing materials - namely, the austere hardness of mirror with the soft warmth of hand-spun and hand painted silk. Paired with the bifurcated circle and overall symmetry, the result is an object that centers itself within a conversation of references that are wildly diverse but yet only some can be understood within the narrow focus of western art and design. For example, the Scandanavian influences, along with references to macrame and western high fashion, may read top of mind. But other references, many of which are long standing non-western influences not part of historical vernacular, are also present. We celebrate the ways in which the Apollo Mirror comes from a long line of work that owes its formal qualities to not only western design ideals, but the design ideals seen within the African diaspora. This includes the use of juxtaposing materials, as seen in both sculptural and ceremonial objects throughout central Africa. Our use of symmetry, angular pairings, and strong two-dimensional forms are part of a long aesthetic history as seen in Egypt and beyond. Also important to note is that as designers we are working under the strong influence of western European and American artists from the 19th and 20th centuries, most of who were taking their aesthetic reference points from non-western artistic cultures, but not always being transparent in their origin sources. "

- Aja Blanc, Designer

Ben & Aja Blanc is a Providence-based design studio whose work merges art with functionality, resulting in contemporary functional designs that possess a modern style inspired by fine art.
Shop the Apollo Mirror

Ewe Studio

" EWE’s Partera Chair is a homage to the birthing chair commonly used in ancient Mexico, as well as in other parts of the world. Our re-interpretation carefully derived by respecting its origin, history, and portraying the power of the object, reflected in its shape and the process of hand-carving and burning the wood.

In our practice, we believe the importance of recognizing the cultural, material, and artisanal heritage of Mexico, by elevating its quality and its language to a contemporary context. Objects are snapshots of our reality that in the future become archaeological remains in the way we think and do things. We would like that the pieces we create, can be read as a conscientious way of looking back in heritage while creating contemporary work with integrity.

TRNK’s exhibition PROVENANCED breathes of our essence and shares our ethics. Our mission to preserve and advance Mexican ancient techniques and aesthetics, while creating new languages and meanings. For EWE it is important to work in parallel with our artisans, while challenging one another and forging inspiration and meaning from our past. "

- Age Salajõe, Curator of Ewe Studio

EWE is a design studio based in Mexico City, devoted to the preservation and advancement of Mexico’s rich artisan heritage.
Shop the Partera Chair

Form Atelier

" It's said that originality is dependent on the obscurity of your sources. Picasso is quoted as saying "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." We disagree. Now, more than ever, we share a collective responsibility to acknowledge the true origins of ideas.

When we buy African art, we don't see it as 'tribal' or 'primitive', as it's so often reduced to. We see it as art in its own right. We buy with the intent of showing how the likes of Picasso, Brancusi, Braque, Modigliani, Gaugain and countless others have borrowed endlessly from African art, and how it has played such a central role in the birth of modern art, sculpture and design.

It could be a Fang reliquary head that directly influenced Modigliani's elongated faces, or a Zulu neckrest re-interpreted by Marcel Coard as a carved wood bench in the 1930's. Those connections fascinate us. That's why we're delighted to engage in TRNK's conversation around African and indigenous contributions to Western design language. "

- Avril Nolan, FORM Atelier Co-Founder

Form Atelier is a Brooklyn based showroom and creative consultancy who looks for the connections between art, objects and furniture, and how they contribute to a larger narrative.
SHOP THE COLLECTION

Jomo Tariku

Ethiopian American artist and industrial designer Jomo Tariku is defining a new design language of modern African-themed furniture. As a young boy growing up in Ethiopia he was always drawn to the eclectic art, souvenirs, and furniture pieces his father collected during his travel throughout Africa and beyond. Jomo developed craftsman skills while spending his summer breaks at a local furniture builder in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia . He went on to study Industrial Design at the University of Kansas, U.S.A and completed his college thesis on Contemporary African Furniture. Jomo’s furniture include a wide variety of artistic designs that synthesis his own experience of the continents diverse culture, historical structures, architecture, traditional furniture, colors, artifacts, landscapes, wildlife and hair styles.

- Jomo Tariku, Designer

Ethiopian American artist and industrial designer Jomo Tariku is defining a new design language of modern African-themed furniture.
Shop the Nyala Chair

Marta Bonilla

" The design of this piece is reminiscent of a woman with her arms raised, hence her name, Dona Lamp. The figure of women has historically been oppressed by patriarchy, and not only the role of women, but also people with different sexual orientations, races, or religions.

History has always given priority and protaganismo to men, relegating and excluding women. The Renaissance, for example, is a "rebirth" only for men, who saw their educational and employment possibilities improved at that time. For women it was the opposite: they could not access humanistic education and laws were passed that further restricted their possibilities.

Our first ancestors learned to make clay and bake pottery; they worked enamel and mixed cosmetics - the origin of chemical science. Taking care of agriculture and gathering, they also discovered the medicinal properties of plants and learned how to dry, store, and mix plant substances. Women have always been healers, surgeons, and midwives. But unfortunately these works have not been considered with the same importance as those carried out by men.

Not only these issues motivate me to work, many things that surround me are inspiring for me, nature and its organic forms, culture, and art. The work of many artists is a great source of inspiration, such as Picasso, Miró or Brancusí, who are among my favorites, but above all strong women who have been brave breaking stereotypes and carving out a niche in professions in which at that time they were a minority, for example Gerogia O'Keefe or Barbara Hepworth.

The work that Tariq is doing seems to me to be fantastic and necessary, as it emphasizes African, Indigenous, and Ancient art. An art that is not as recognized as it should be and is simple, pure, and innocent, something really difficult to achieve today.

I am especially attracted to his way of using clay and the techniques used, civilizations that have left a great legacy of pieces, in which we see and understand their needs and modus vivendi thanks to them.

The coiling technique was the one used to create them, I feel fascinated by those modeled pieces, leaving the handprint impregnated in the clay, pieces made with great talent, with harmonious silhouettes, and durable, so much so that some have survived intact to this day. The Dona Lamp has great influence from African art - the shape is natural, showing the technique with which it has been made, not trying to make a perfect piece, showing beautiful defects that make the piece more authentic and honest. The material chosen in this case, raffia, is a material that comes from Africa, widely used in its crafts. "

- Marta Bonilla, Designer

Marta Bonilla is a Barcelona-based ceramicist who crafts each piece by hand, intending to render visible traces of the creative process.
Shop the Dona Lamp

Pretziada

" We see PROVENANCED as an opportunity to go a bit further at examining what happens when certain concepts become part of a shared aesthetic history, as well as what our specific role in that history is. Being based on the island of Sardinia, and fully dedicated to celebrating, sharing and reproposing its historic crafts, we work within a very specific realm. The island, being located in the middle of the Mediterranean, has had many cultural influences, including from Northern Africa and the Middle East. More specifically, the iconography of the island has been strikingly constant, with even contemporary crafts being influenced by the island’s Neolithic arts and the many cultures that have been present over past millennia.

However, this show has asked us to confront our choices as Art Directors more directly. Why one design and not another? While we do maintain that each object we present is loyal to our island’s heritage - any Sardinian who sees our chairs instantly recognizes them as Sardinian chairs - we think this is a conversation that is rarely approached with the necessary subtlety, complexity, and specific responsibility that it requires. The question that this show poses, and that we honestly rarely ask ourselves so candidly, is how do we approach the concept of beauty, and why? Why does something feel representative, and to whom?

One of the most fascinating aspects of Sardinia’s history to us has always been the enormous influence that various peoples (both Western and non-Western) have had on the island, and how the local culture has resisted fully assimilating into a neat representation of European norms. It is an integral part of our work to explore those histories and detail them with each object we present. PROVENANCED was a new opportunity to highlight this heritage in a meaningful and thoughtful way. "

- Kyre Chenven, Pretziada Co-Founder

Pretziada is a creative practice located in Sardinia dedicated to forging new human connections through interdisciplinary artistic action, building invisible bridges between the island and the rest of the world.
Shop the Ines Chair

Rooms Studio

" The main inspiration for our ongoing Wild Minimalism Collection that started in 2016 was the desire to go “back to the roots”. In today’s restless world, unfolding hidden treasures of our historic roots, is what grounds us and brings us closer to our true Selves. We see “Wild Minimalism” as a new design direction that mixes ethnic and primitive shapes, to create sculptural pieces that have an unmistaken human- made feel. Using wood carving techniques of our ancestors, we wanted to give traditions a second chance, by honoring and preserving them and to carry them forward into the future.

Stripped down to the core essence, the objects have a strong symbolic and graphic feel and even though rooted in the archaic, they feel totally modern and authentic in everyday life. With Wild Minimalism, we wanted to catch a “simple bliss of life” and create something very simple but wild at the same time - to create something that is deeply connected. "

- Nata Janberidze, Co-Founder of Rooms Studio

Rooms is a Tsibili, Georgia-based design studio, characterized by a fondness for storytelling, exploring different directions and a mental acuity.
Shop the Pomegranate Chair

Press

Concerned that racial representation in the design industry doesn’t go far enough, the co-founder of furniture brand TRNK is bringing to light the erased Black histories that influenced Western creative movements–and his work is just beginning.

Surface Magazine
  • While Picasso’s pre-Cubism period is perhaps the most well-known example of the incredible influence that African and Indigenous designs have had on Western artists, it is not alone. However, each story ends mostly the same: the referenced artist is forgotten while the Western “innovator” rises and subsequent references continue to diminish the originator’s significance until the idea is abstracted into anonymity. It is this repeating phenomenon that a new virtual exhibition by design company TRNK aims to end. 

    Cultured
  • With the discussions about boosting diversity in design largely focused on the present and future, a new virtual exhibition assembled by TRNK NYC is casting the spotlight on how the design world has in fact been influenced by African and Indigenous aesthetics for years. Reflected in work originating from a global assembly of contemporary designers as well as vintage pieces of African origin, Provenanced investigates the different ways in which designers have referenced African and Indigenous culture, whether intentionally or not.

    Wallpaper
  • His exhibitions are personal. This year for Pride, Dixon debuted a photography show called Mien featuring queer artists of color to explore intersecting identities and raise money for the Ali Forney Center. And today, he debuted his third exhibition, Provenanced, which celebrates the depth and diversity of contributions by African and Indigenous artists, which contemporary designs often take inspiration from.

    New York Magazine

SHOP THE COLLECTION

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Nyala Chair
Dona Lamp
Apollo Mirror
Partera Chair
Pomegranate Chair
Ines Chair
Vintage Ethiopian Jimma Chair
Vintage Grebo Mask
Vintage Baule Mask
Vintage Lobi Chair
Vintage Ibibio Mask
Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art: A Documentary History
Art Nouveau A&i
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