Khoi Khoi and San Leather Practice

Stitching Heritage

Khoikhoi and San Leather Practice

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Exploring heritage through leather, thread and making, drawing on Khoikhoi and San material practices and bringing them into conversation with Palestinian cultural symbolism.

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Leather and Hide

For Khoikhoi and San communities of the Cape, animal skins and hides were an important material for making. As shared by Khoikhoi cultural practitioner Bradley van Sitters, all parts of the animal were used, with hide transformed into clothing, cloaks, bags and forms of protection.

Working with leather offers an opportunity to consider practices rooted in resourcefulness, relationship with animals and the land, and the knowledge carried through making.

 

The Cypress Tree

For this piece, the leather becomes a meeting point between Indigenous cultures of the Cape and Palestine.

The cypress tree, associated with the landscape of Palestine and particularly with Ramallah, is stitched into the leather as a reflection on resilience, endurance, rootedness and connection to place.

Through this practice, two distinct Indigenous cultural contexts are brought into dialogue,not as the same, but through a shared exploration of land, material, memory and survival.

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Reflect

1. What does it mean to work with a material that comes from an animal?

2. What did you notice about the leather as you worked with it?

3. What happens when a traditional material practice is carried into a new context?

4. What connections, differences or resonances did you notice between the Cape and Palestine?

5. How can making become a way of learning about heritage rather than simply looking at it?

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