In this edition, under the theme “The Pattern of Cape Verdean Panaria as Creative Matter”, national creatives and residents of the country were challenged to reinterpret, conceptually and formally, the graphic elements of traditional panaria — characterised by its technical, aesthetic and symbolic richness, with a strong identity and ancestral component in Cape Verde — by developing a design project that could be made through craft production.
Joana Campante
The Boka Panu exhibition arose from the Boka Panu Competition – The pattern of Cape Verdean panaria as creative matter, 2018, and took place as part of the URDI 2018 programme - National Craft and Design Fair, Mindelo, Cape Verde.
Drawing close to the knowledge of master weaver Marcelino dos Santos, we recognise the presence of the cotton plant, as a stylised figure, in the patterns of Cape Verdean panaria. (...) The use of clothing made from cotton (...) would turn this heritage into a king product of great commercial and symbolic importance.
It is in this context that the Neve Insular project seeks to lift the veil on the extinction of cotton production in the archipelago, as well as on the growing tendency for the knowledge and activities associated with this raw material to disappear.
Working in the expanded field of design, the project proposes two simultaneous actions (...): a photograph and a set of box-like objects that embody an invitation to the performative, collective event of sowing cotton seeds in the earth.