The Importance of Restoration
In Conversation with Dolph Banza
LI: Can you tell us about yourself, and what you’ve recently been working on?
DB: Hi, I’m Dolph Banza, I’m an illustrator, designer and science enthusiast. I’ve been working on an interesting project which consists of studying some rare and ancient objects which were taken or stolen in this case; by Germans; among others. These objects are precolonial. My study consisted of trying to understand their design structure; so that I can use it in my everyday life — where I face challenges that require a lot of inspiration; and there’s no better inspiration than something that comes from my ancestors.
“As part of DECOLONYCITIES KIGALI-HAMBURG, a project by @yolanda_gutierrez_projects_, the Rwandan illustrator Dolph Banza will set up his studio in the space between the MARKK to interact with historical objects from Rwanda.” — via Mark Hamburg — Instagram
LI: It’s good to see more practices that we have missed: more creative ways of expression that they used; which broadens our spectrum as well. I’m glad you highlighted that these were stolen artifacts. This was part of a project called DecolonyCities — Can you tell us more about that?
DB: DecolonyCities is a project which consists of raising awareness and creating connection between two cities: Kigali and Hamburg, in Germany. During the colonial era, Hamburg was a big colonial city; because they have a huge harbor — they have a lot of ships coming from many colonial territories that brought all these things that were taken from various countries and brought to Germany. They have a concentration of many African artifacts that range from masks, craft, weavings, and more in different museums. I had had quite an interest in these for a long while; so me having a visual and technical study on the Rwandan objects was quite mind-opening. Because you’re trying to understand ancient design. If you get inspiration from ancient design and you use modern tools and recreate or let it inspire your work; that’s amazing!
LI: It has broadened my way of thinking about design. These were the tops of ‘ibyansi’ — also, known as imitemeri. How long did these objects exist for? And the quality was good!
DB: They’ve been around for more than 100 years; and the quality is good because they’re well conserved. There’s a science on how you conserve an object, by protecting it from fading its color, being attacked by insects. They know how to maintain these objects.
LI: This is my assumption. If these objects existed 100 years ago, and you as a Rwandan, and artist; you’ve also only discovered them now/today. That means there’s a huge gap, and lack of archives about our own heritage. This proves that there’s a lot that we don’t know, especially about our traditional practices as Africans. Half our struggles as creatives could be due to the fact that we have no records about our traditional practices. Do you struggle in your creative process due to the missing links of traditional practices in our records?
There’s a discontinuity between what our ancestors used to design
DB: Let’s point to what our craft people were doing. There’s a discontinuity between what our ancestors used to design; whether in weaving, or woodwork, or others. Today, we are very lucky because we have a lot of education materials/resources and modern tools. Imagine what we can do if we let the past inspire us! There are good things that can be merged. This is the quest that I’ve been trying to practice. Because, as creatives we are mostly following global trends; but we are not creating a language that we can own. Exploring ancient designs can be the thing that connects us back to ancient practices, and a lot of original work can emerge out of that.
LI: It’d bring us back to our own identity, something we are truly missing in the middle of our crafting, and the creative process. Which methods of preservation from your observation that you’ve learned and can share with us?
DB: I got to learn a few things about preservation; such as you can’t touch objects by hands in order to not contaminate them with organic materials: sweat, or insects may attack and ruin the object, hence why we must wear gloves while touching the object. Another thing, the object can not be left to direct sunlight : in order to preserve the colors to avoid fadedness: as seen on billboards that are left on direct sunlight. My interest lies in the geometric composition of objects, patterns and structure. Geometry plays a major role in design: as seen in art, photography, in colors, etc… Geometry pattern also shown in how they structured their weavings through their repetitive number of rows and skips. It was a surprise for me, in terms of geometrical harmony. There’s a lot of pattern found in modern design also found in ancient design. And intuitively, we are wired to judge things according to geometry.
LI: That reminds on how museums are designed: dark and with a specific lighting, now I understand the reason for that approach. And yes, that is a push to explore geometry in various lenses. Which other history have you learned on the project?
“It’s about the craftsperson and the society this object existed within.”
DB: When you are studying about these objects — it’s about the craftsperson and the society this object existed within. They’re masterpieces of crafts, weaving, and you realize that to be able to make these objects was accompanied with a lifetime skill.; because when you look at these objects through a microscope, you can see how small and meticulous they are — so it gives you an idea about the society which came up with these objects. So, it’s not only about objects but about people as well. You look back at the past and you pay respect to these people — because they made big and artistic objects. Something like a milk pot isn’t something someone should put in a lot of work and attention — just in a milk cover. But being able to do that, it means there was a big deal about aesthetics, and the way of life — so you come out of the study with a lot of respect and admiration for the people who made those projects.
LI: Other than ‘imitemeri’ ; were there any other object or design that we don’t or haven’t seen in our community?
DB: There are a lot of objects. But most of them can’t be moved — some of other objects were made of copper, ivory, cloth and there was also some plastic: which shows that we have always been in touch with the Eastern side of Africa: by trade from Asia through Zanzibar, and objects from Zanzibar cross Tanzania, Congo and Rwanda.
LI: Is this Museum(MarkHamburg) public? Are these objects exhibited and can we find more of their info online?
DB: You can visit the Museum, but unfortunately, our objects are not on display. They are stored somewhere in the basement — you can’t see them online or even visit them at the museum. The reason why these objects specifically we never seen them — I think, that they probably belonged to high-ranking members of society at the time.
LI: I guess they remain high-ranked since we still have no access to them. Someone in the chat, mentioned that we can try to create VR 3D prototypes. Philippe asked were you able to connect to the history behind those objects — were the patterns common to Rwanda or specific to the owners?
DB: The objects are conserved in museums by numbers. They weren’t and aren’t interested in learning history of the objects — they were only interested in the aesthetics. They didn’t care about classifying the objects, or recording written materials about its history or the previous owners. You have some kind of contract showing that the object was bought or donated; just a justification to keep the object — but not much about the history of the object itself or the emotional connection to the people. That’s how you treat something stolen!
LI: It’s a burden to fight for what belongs to us, and they benefit while the owners ought to be the ones that benefit from it. The 3D proposal leads me to this question; Were you able to draw these ‘imitemeri’ by scale? This is one-step of recording our own heritage. We could create prototypes.
DB: My approach was not very realistic, but a mix of artistic. I have blueprints but studying these objects in detail would have requested more time. We can use these blueprints to recreate these prototypes, but I have doubts we can find skilled people enough to recreate these intricate details.
LI: We should create that prototype.
DB: I might for personal and not commercial purposes, definitely!
LI: Thank you so much for your time, we’ll work on continuing this conversation soon.
Click here to Find out more about Dolph Banza.
Written & Interviewed by Lise Isaro — July 30th, 2021.
