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David Furst: This is All Of It. I'm David Furst filling in for Alison Stewart. A landmark exhibition showcases the post-independence fashions hailing from the continent of Africa. It's called Africa Fashion. The space is huge. With more than 300 items on display, the show is meant to create a multi-sensory experience. The pieces include high-end fashion, ready-to-wear apparel, photographs, sketches, music, film, textiles, and jewelry.

A New York Times review called the show exquisitely beautiful with textiles, accessories, and clothing that are surprising and curious. Hardly an inch of this show is expected or cliche. Africa Fashion is on display at the Brooklyn Museum through October 22nd. Joining us to discuss is Ernestine White-Mifetu, the Sills Foundation Curator of African Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Ernestine, welcome to All Of It.

Ernestine White-Mifetu: Hi. Good afternoon, everyone.

David Furst: Also joining us is Annissa Malvoisin, the inaugural postdoctoral fellow in the arts of Africa at the Bard Graduate Center and the Brooklyn Museum. Annissa, welcome to you.

Annissa Malvoisin: Hello, thank you.

David Furst: Ernestine, this exhibition focuses on the fashions from the 1950s to today. That is a lot to take in. Is there any way to define the aesthetic of African fashion through this period of time?

Ernestine White-Mifetu: What people have to understand is Africa as a continent and it's 54 countries, so there is no one aesthetic that you can equate to be what is referred to as African fashion. What the exhibition really does is give the visitor a window into the diversity of histories, whether it's through its political histories, its textile histories, and uses that as the groundwork to engage with how fashion and the notion of self-fashioning is articulated by a number of different communities from a number of spaces on the African continent through a number of visual representations from fashion, visual art, music, film, photography.

We try to do the impossible by giving you a window into the vastness of its creativity from the African continent in as many art forms as possible spreading across a number of generations.

David Furst: I know this is radio, but can you paint the picture for us? Walk us through this space. It's so visually striking.

Ernestine White-Mifetu: Sure.

David Furst: Tell us what we see when we walk into this exhibit.

Ernestine White-Mifetu: As you enter the exhibition, you first see Miriam Makeba, who is a South African singer and activist. We start also off with the images of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Then on the opposite side of that same space is a long timeline that outlines the journey that the African continent has taken in its 54 very individual countries and the processes that those countries took to obtain independence. We felt that that was an important starting point to give people a window into how those histories then influenced all the kinds of creativity that we touch on in throughout the exhibition.

First, its histories, how then its creatives engage with those histories through notions of self-fashioning, music being an important entry point to understanding the African continent and its creatives. Then from there, engaging with how writers also engage with this notion of the independent Black and brown body post-independence. From that section, we move you into what is referred to as the Politics and Poetics of Cloth.

With bright colors, we start the visitor with a conversation on how the political realities of the African continent also inspired and created a movement towards engaging with notions of textile histories where the African continent would start to look inward post-independence to really create opportunities for inspiration where its designers, its creatives would look towards its textile traditions. We highlight some important ones, kente, adire, bogolanfini. All these really well-known textile traditions from the African continent as a beginning marker to what you will see later on in the exhibition that is referred to as the Vanguard.

In this space that is presented as a jewel, we highlight some of the modern fashion designers from the African continent and some of them. There are many. In this space, we have designers such as Kofi Ansa, we have Chris Seydou, we have Naima Bennis, we have Shade Thomas-Fahm, we have Alphadi. All these designers from particular regions on the African continent, looking to their own specific textile traditions, but also inspired by others to create a new way of looking at fashion post-independence. Then from that section, we move you on to the contemporary, what is referred to as the cutting edge. My colleague Annissa can elaborate on that section.

Annissa Malvoisin: Once we get into the cutting edge, this is where we look at the contemporary designers and how they're reimagining what Ernestine mentioned, these textile traditional practices and they're reimagining them in contemporary ways, which is really beautiful. This section is divided into six. We take the visitor on this really amazing and dynamic journey that takes a look at six different sections of creation because not all designers are the same. However, we also want visitors to know that despite maybe a designer being in one section, they could also relate to another section that gets intersectional at the same time.

David Furst: I have to say, Annissa, you just have to see the visuals. It's incredible.

Annissa Malvoisin: Oh my gosh.

David Furst: It's just incredible. It's just an incredible, overwhelming exhibition.

Annissa Malvoisin: Yes. Honestly, it's really difficult to make that clear through radio.

[laughter]

Annissa Malvoisin: You have to come and see it.

David Furst: You have to come and see it. There you go.

Ernestine White-Mifetu: Yes.

David Furst: Go ahead.

Ernestine White-Mifetu: I think also too to add on to that is the inclusion of music that was really important for Annissa and I. Each within the three sections of the exhibition, we use music as an opportunity to ground you in the moment. As you enter and you see Miriam Makeba and Fela Kuti, you hear Pata Pata, you hear Zombie. These are songs that are known and iconic to the creatives.

Then you move to the Vanguard, you hear another series of songs that really look towards that time period again of the '60s and '70s. Then you move to the cutting edge where it's contemporary Amapiano, afro beats. It truly is an opportunity for visitors to dance through the exhibition, which we have seen on a number of occasions.

David Furst: There's not enough dancing in exhibitions, let's be honest.

Ernestine White-Mifetu: For us, it was really about how do we get to have an experience that is multi-generational, and an entry point for young ones is definitely through music.

David Furst: Annissa, how did the fashion industry at large respond to all of this creation that we see in this exhibition? How did they respond and interpret this revival and re-emergence of cultural traditions in attire?

Annissa Malvoisin: Are you speaking today or within the exhibition narrative?

David Furst: I think a little bit of both. How did they respond to some of this work when it was first debuted?

Annissa Malvoisin: Thinking specifically about the modern designers, which Ernestine explained was the Vanguard, I always speak about Chris Seydou who actually really loved the Paris fashion industry. He was very interested in it and that's where he went and that's where he started his fashion journey. He went to Paris, worked there in the early '70s and, that's when he became this brand-name designer.

What he did was take what he learned in the Paris fashion industry, brought it back to Mali, so he's Malian, brought it back to Bamako, and infused that with his traditional practices. We have this really gorgeous, little outfit. It's a skirt and a tapered jacket, but the whole thing is in bogolanfini, which is a mud-dyed cloth made by the Bamana of Mali. Really looking back onto his cultural traditions, but bringing it to the Western runway which was really dynamic, and it honestly was something transformational in the Western world.

During this time of the brand name designer, in the '60s and the '70s at the same time of these independence movements, you're really seeing this cultural exchange from the continent to the Western world, North America and Europe, especially Europe. It was received, I believe, quite well. Just looking at historical facts, this is just what happened. Then today, I feel like there's still so much intercultural interchange. It's become timeless, so yes.

Ernestine White-Mifetu: I can add on to that. A designer, for example, Imane Ayissi who is Cameroonian but based in Paris, and really creating a brand that, as Annissa is saying, was really being appreciated across the continent using traditional African textile histories and infusing that with a modern contemporary sense of style that is really looking to the occulture traditions of the West.

David Furst: Ernestine, in the show, you can describe this probably better than I can, but there's this mannequin in an orange plaid suit with a black top hat that was styled by Off-White creative director Ibrahim Kamara, who was inspired by designer Chris Seydou. Can you talk about this piece and the inspiration here?

Ernestine White-Mifetu: Yes. Thank you so much for that. That's in a section that's referred to as Global Africa. Within that section, we highlight designers who have African descent who are looking to either be inspired by textile traditions of the past and also those designers of the past. Chris Seydou was a designer that Ernestine just mentioned that is within the section referred to as the Vanguard. This young creative, Ibrahim Kamara, inspired by that history, those histories of really looking towards the past to create something that is new and contemporary.

Using photography and fashion photography in particular, Ibrahim Kamara really invites you to remember those histories and also to then understand that although those designers at the time are now referred to as modern, within their own time, they were seen as cutting edge. Now you have a new generation of creatives through Ibrahim Kamara and many others that are taking the baton to create again another vanguard that is really inspiring not just African creators, but creators on the global scale.

David Furst: Annissa, when I ask you this, maybe you both might want to respond to this, but this blockbuster exhibition opened last summer at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. How did the show land at Brooklyn Museum?

Ernestine White-Mifetu: I'll start it off. Brooklyn Museum had the foresight of understanding how important this kind of exhibition would be to Brooklyn and New York and American audiences. Brooklyn Museum is within a borough that is extremely diverse in its diasporic communities, and so Africa Fashion really trying to tap into the histories and realities of the communities that are here, and creating an opportunity to reflect those histories in an exhibition that really encompasses not just fashion, visual art, but also really engaging with notions of representation.

Also, within the exhibition, you'll notice mannequins that are very different than the normal mannequins that you would see in most exhibitions. This one was designed by the Victoria and Albert Museum after a model Adele Bauer. You have this visual representation of an actual person, and then in addition to that, the diversity of skin tones, the diversity of hairstyles all again come back to understanding the vastness and scope of how do we understand the African continent through its modes of representation.

David Furst: Really, the way the whole space has been imagined is immersive. It's just incredible. The show is also supplemented with works from the Brooklyn Museum's own holdings, right? What are some of the pieces from Brooklyn Museum's collection that are highlighted in this exhibition?

Annissa Malvoisin: Yes. We were so fortunate to include our own collection from contemporary to arts of the Islamic world. Honestly, that's what I love about African art and African art history is that it's really all-encompassing and really touches-- You can see it in many different collections, so we were able to use many of our collections to do so. We have photography from Omar Victor Diop, from Marilyn Nance, from J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere. We were able to also include Atta Kwami's work, so visual art as well.

We were really excited to include some of our own adornments from Ptolemaic and Greek and Roman Egypt. It was also very important for us to make sure that we represented the geotemporality of Africa in a new way, so that was why we really wanted to include many different collections. We were also able to supplement a lot of our fabrics, our textile collections. That made up a large part of that Politics and Poetics of Cloth section that Ernestine was speaking about.

David Furst: Once again, the exhibition is called Africa Fashion. It is on display at the Brooklyn Museum through October 22nd. Ernestine White-Mifetu, the Sills Foundation Curator of African Art at the Brooklyn Museum, and Annissa Malvoisin, the postdoctoral fellow in the arts of Africa at the Bard Graduate Center and the Brooklyn Museum, thank you for joining us today.

Ernestine White-Mifetu: Thank you so much for listening.

Annissa Malvoisin: Thank you so much.

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