“Christine Eyene invited me in the autumn of 2013 to work with the Bulawayo basket- making community of women in Zimbabwe, within the framework of the Bulawayo Home Industries which promotes and safeguards the know-how of basket-making.

I had a similar experience in Hungary in 2009 with a Romani community in the village Szendrőlád, instigated by the Syrian artist Roza El Hassan who initiated this workshop by inviting other artists.

Working within high social-impact contexts requires amplified awareness, forcing
us to fully perceive our reason for being present and of the jointly-created project.
I went to Bulawayo in the spring of 2014 and I worked for one week with 17 women organized in five groups around a woman who was an expert in basket-making. This was a very humanly-inspirational experience.

I wanted to focus the workshop on evolving this emblematic gourd basket shape made by the community three years ago for the first exhibition, Basket Case I: the gourd.
I love this object as it’s inexact and you feel that one person gave their time and their consideration, basically making one-of-a-kind objects each time.

This community has acquired the know-how to enlarge or reduce the shape at will. All I needed was to tell them to reduce the size, to make several simultaneously and to then combine them together, accentuating the natural aspect.

The women didn’t initially understand what I meant until the first gourd was made and then, from the look in their eyes I could guess they were pleased with the result. 

he goal of the workshop was to give them some tips for a perceptible result such as to never hook or sew on the parts together but rather to have them incorporated, woven on to the same body. Or to each time find a specific use for the shape such as becoming the handle for a bag or a foot to raise a board.

It was a week full of constructive attempts and allowed for a language and a grammar to emerge from this same shape.

Some are more inspirational than others and some are more practical but they create a family which is limitless. The gourd’s family.

A family who not only reinforces the community’s production identity but who also extends and brings it up to date. A family perpetuating the know-how by creating items that are deliberately more complicated in how the various bodies are woven together. The project also allowed to append gourds made by different women regardless of who actually made them, enabling for an unprecedented collective production of objects.

The next step would be to see this family continue along these lines, with the backing of these women’s actions... that is what we most desire.” 

The gourd’s family collection was made by the women of Bulawayo Home Industries within the framework of the Basket Case workshop from the Eunic programme financed by the European Committee and is therefore the second edition.

Bulawayo Home Industries is a social structure financed by the city of Bulawayo whose goal is to assist women in difficulty to find work again by learning a specific craft.

The gourd’s family collection was made by the women of Bulawayo Home Industries within the framework of the Basket Case workshop from the Eunic programme financed by the European Committee and is therefore the second edition.

Bulawayo Home Industries is a social structure financed by the city of Bulawayo whose goal is to assist women in difficulty to find work again by learning a specific craft.