While revisiting Tapping Currents: Contemporary African Art and the Diaspora, I checked out the connection the curator makes between El Anatsui’s Hovor and kente cloth. The Museum’s African galleries had
El Anatsui’s work is sewn together unusually enough with copper wire. The patterning of the brightly interwoven liquor-bottle tops is very similar to kente cloth. Using alternate strips of cloth or in this case, the bottle tops, to create vertical and horizontal designs, the artists, then and now, weave an intricate, geometric pattern.
Hovor is derived from two Ewe words meaning “cloth of wealth” which again relates to kente cloth’s connection to African royalty. Kente cloth for those in the Ewe culture who were not royalty, typically saved this cloth for special occasions such as festivals and marriage or funeral ceremonies.
Although Hovor is made out of liquor-bottle tops and sewn with copper wire, it truly looks as though it is a cloth and could be worn like kente cloth. They are both amazingly intricate and beautiful. It’s interesting to see an African tradition being reimagined by a contemporary artist.