Abstract Despite its popular acclaim, scant research has been undertaken on tapestry-weaving at the Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre, Rorke’s Drift, in South Africa, where rural black women helped establish a prolific tapestry practice in 1963. In time, the proceeds from the sale of their works would support both their own and further ventures at the Centre. In narrating the pedagogic encounters between tapestry artists and the Swedish artists who taught them, the author interrogates the limited representations of these marginalized women artists as a homogenous collective lacking individuality and agency. The author’s findings show how weavers asserted their knowledge in the loom, challenging assumptions in the literature that the tapestry practice can be explained as the outcome of foreign expertise. This article illuminates the strategies by which weavers borrowed, then transformed, the emancipatory and other iconographies they encountered, developing new syntaxes through individual initiative and creative alliances at the loom. The Centre’s struggle to balance tensions between western concepts of “originality” and production demands is also uncovered. In identifying and according significance to a number of the women’s tapestries, this account repositions the contribution by rural (black) women to South African art in the apartheid era.

中文翻译：

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在 Rorke's Drift 发展 Tapestry 实践：织布机中的女性联盟、机构和视觉句法

摘要 尽管广受赞誉，但在南非罗克漂流的福音派路德教会艺术和工艺中心对挂毯编织进行的研究很少，1963 年，农村黑人妇女在那里帮助建立了多产的挂毯实践。出售他们的作品将支持他们自己和在中心的进一步事业。在讲述挂毯艺术家和教他们的瑞典艺术家之间的教育遭遇时，作者质疑这些被边缘化的女性艺术家作为一个缺乏个性和能动性的同质集体的有限表现。作者的研究结果显示了织工如何在织布机中证明他们的知识，挑战了文献中的假设，即挂毯实践可以解释为外国专业知识的结果。这篇文章阐明了织工借用然后改造他们遇到的解放性和其他图像的策略，通过个人主动性和织布机上的创造性联盟开发新的句法。该中心在平衡西方“原创性”概念和生产需求之间的紧张关系方面所做的努力也被揭露出来。在确定和确定一些女性挂毯的重要性时，该描述重新定位了种族隔离时代农村（黑人）女性对南非艺术的贡献。该中心在平衡西方“原创性”概念和生产需求之间的紧张关系方面所做的努力也被揭露出来。在确定和确定一些女性挂毯的重要性时，该描述重新定位了种族隔离时代农村（黑人）女性对南非艺术的贡献。该中心在平衡西方“原创性”概念和生产需求之间的紧张关系方面所做的努力也被揭露出来。在确定和确定一些女性挂毯的重要性时，该描述重新定位了种族隔离时代农村（黑人）女性对南非艺术的贡献。