SIGNS AND SYMBOLS: FROM MALI, WEST AFRICA TO BROOKLYN, NY

1996
JANET BRAUN-REINITZ

Schenck Avenue between Livonia & New Lots Avenues, East New York, Brooklyn, NY
10’ x 55’, acrylic on brick
with United Community Centers

Photo © Janet Braun-Reinitz

Traditional designs found in bògòlanfini or mud cloth – developed by the Bamana people of Mali and an expression of national identity-inspired Signs and Symbols. For traditional bògòlanfini, cotton cloth is woven, shrunk, and then soaked in a preparation of leaves from certain plants. Men usually perform the weaving, and the women the dyeing, first outlining the intricate designs with fermented mud. The mud is treated with caustic soda, bleaching the designs to create white figures on a dark ground.

Each piece of mud cloth tells a story. No two pieces are alike and each pattern and color combination has meaning. Mud cloth is also used to define a person’s social status, character or occupation.

While mud cloth is produced by centuries-old technique with motifs passed from mother to daughter, much of the imagery in Signs and Symbols was developed by the student painters to reflect contemporary urban life. Traditional bògòlanfini symbols included peanuts, brave man's belt and fish bones. Of the new symbols, two were adaptations of old ones: subway tracks from snake bones and the checkerboard pattern from panther skins. Two were already existing symbols: the AIDS ribbon and recycling logo. The young artists created designs representing the need to stop violence, love, friendship, celebration, beauty, the city, urban nature, food, music, sports, UCC (the mural’s sponsor), and an old African American cemetery located nearby.

The images were applied to the mural using stencils, creating more hard edge, less tactile designs than found in the cloth. The black and brown "mud" colors used as background were matched to those in an actual piece of mid-twentieth century bògòlanfini. Brightly colored kente cloth from Ghana is behind the credits panel. Made of interwoven cloth strips, it was originally the "cloth of kings."