Event

Sewing and Sowing: The Arts and Life of Africans (Siddis) in IndiaPost an Event »

Museum of the African Diaspora

July 24 - July 24, 2011

Info

685 Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94105
Google Map »
Africans have traveled, lived, and worked as merchants, sailors, soldiers, and high court officials in South Asia for more than 1500 years. Known as Siddis in India, those living today in the state of Karnataka are mostly the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to Goa by the Portuguese between the 16th – 19th centuries. Escaping bondage, they migrated into the Western Ghatt mountains where they created free, independent, African Diaspora communities. Numbering about 20,000 today, they live in small villages scattered in the forests and high plains and are renowned for their unique patchwork quilts known as kawandi. Quilts are created by women for family members and used as mattresses or covers. Small, baby-sized kawandi, often decorated with small, brightly colored patches known as tikeli, fill wooden cribs suspended from the rafters of Siddi homes. Larger quilts for three or more persons is seen as auspicious as it implies a growing family with children. This talk considers the vibrant arts and agri-culture of the Siddis both past and present.