bellows, unrecorded Chokwe artist

African technologies of metalsmithing and weaving historically required tools that bestowed artists with the transformative powers of women’s fertility. Across Africa, smelting and metalsmithing, male activities associated with fire, ritually invoked female reproductive power. Bellows representing reproductive organs pumped life-giving air into “pregnant” furnaces to turn raw ore into iron. In the Maghrib (the region spanning present-day Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania), spinning and weaving were female activities that harnessed women’s fertility. Spindles possessed metaphysical energies to transform raw wool into thread for the “child-bearing” activity of weaving. These metaphors endure in African artistic practice. For example, Safia Farhat, whose work is represented in this exhibition, directed a modernist tapestry workshop where Tunisian artists performed reproductive rites such as benedictions, burning incense, and sharing nourishing foods consumed during pregnancy to ease labor.