Mozambican-born Lizette Chirrime
Blue 1, 2016.
Statements:
Every piece of work is different. I work with fabric collage and some stitching on canvas, and include variations of fabric, scales, animal fur and human hair, but each canvas only reveals what it’s going to become when I’m in the process of working with it. Cloth collage is a major feature I integrate, and I’m so lucky that my studio is across the road from an authentic African material shop in Observatory, Cape Town. The woman who owns that shop makes clothes and sells waxed-print African fabric. When she has offcuts, I collect them to use in my artworks. If she doesn’t have what I want, then I go and buy from other places.
Red 1, 2016.
Sea Goddess, 2016.
Nandu’s UK, 2016.
The materials I work with are predominantly African because I am African. I just found out that these African waxed-print fabrics are not ‘truly’ African fabrics, but printed in Amsterdam. For a very long time, however, Africans have embraced this kind of printed cloth as our own, and as an important part of our culture. If you go to Mozambique, you’ll see that women adorn themselves with these fabrics, and it’s a sign of pride. These fabrics are my thing. They’re my culture. Also, I like the patterns, the prints and the colours. When I make art, I try to bring out the colours inside me through the fabrics that I use.(Quotes from Between 10 and 5 Magazine, September 2016)