Wired: Telephone Wire Art from South Africa

The long-awaited reprint of the sold-out first edition, Wired is the first book to document the development of wire weaving in African art. 

With over 270 magnificent full-color images, Wired showcases the works of the most renowned contemporary weavers. The decorative use of wire has long been a feature of African artwork and, with advancements in telecommunications, a new type of wire-multi-colored, plastic-coated copper wire, referred to as telephone wire— became available. In the 1960s, Zulu night watchmen started weaving scraps of this wire around their traditional sticks. The practice became popular among Zulu communities, and today, there is great innovation and creativity in the use of this medium. Artists have produced goods ranging from soft wire bowls and plates to glass bottle covers, tea sets, isikhetho (beer strainers), and pots, all created in a wide variety of colors and complex patterns.

The first major exhibition showcasing the spectacular art of telephone-wire weaving in any North American museum opens at the Museum of International Folk Art in NYC on November 17, 2024.  iNgqikithi yokuPhica / Weaving Meanings: Telephone Wire Art from South Africa was developed in consultation with artists, community members, and other experts with deep connections to wire-weaving communities in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Produced in collaboration with the Museum, scholars, and a committee of Indigenous Knowledge Experts, Weaving Meanings shares the histories of wire as an artistic medium in South Africa, from its use as a marker of social status in the 19th-century the early introduction of colorful telephone wire as a recycled material, to the dazzling styles weavers create for local and international markets today.

Exhibition schedule:

Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA), Santa Fe, NM
(November 17, 2024-November 27, 2025)