The Sibyls Tapestry
“Two Black Doves had come flying from Thebes in Kemet, one to Libya and one to Dodona;
The latter settled on an oak tree, and there uttered human speech”.
Quote from Herodotus (Histories 2.57)
The Sibyls Tapestry
The Sibyls were historical, although often mythologised Oracle Priestesses who practised divination in veneration of Gods and Goddesses in ancient times.
Aberdeen University Commission:
The Sibyls and their mysterious legacy have been a subject of great interest to me for some time, so it was exciting to see the George Jameson portraits depicting them in the Aberdeen University Collection.
This led to my decision to focus on the Sibyls, their legacy and portrayal for the Dovcot Tapestry Commission.
Quote:
“I am interested in processes of erasure of Black and Brown womxn in monuments and paintings, and with it the obfuscation of and systematic removal of signifiers of our influence and proliferation of knowledge, culture, spirituality and more.”
Context
Jameson Portrait:
Sibyl of Libya; Aberdeen Collection
Where portraits can often offer us some reference point to how we might expect a particular person from a time-period, culture, or tradition to have looked, we find an overwhelming pattern of erasure, obfuscation and revisionist histories in biblical depictions of Jesus and his disciples, the reinscribing from Isis and Horus of the Black Madonna and child to the Virgin Mary.
The erasure of Black figures is well-documented the world over. It is not only a methodology of imperialism. In the case of the Sibyls, this process has rendered these women both whitewashed and mythologised, in clear efforts to obscure or even obliterate the incredibly huge impact and influence of Black Womxn in the creation, dissemination and proliferation of knowledge since antiquity.
Jan Van Hoecke Painting
One of the more contemporary depictions of a Sibyl can be found here in this sculpture by William Wetmore Story who chose to depict the Sibyl as a woman of colour, using symbols, including her braided hair and creates a mythos surrounding the Sibyl in this work as prophesying the period of the middle passage, and the eventual emancipation of former enslaved Africans in the New World.
The Agrippine Sibyl is often the most clearly depicted as a dark-skinned
or Black Womxn.
Previous Tapestry Commission
Lively Blue is a tapestry commission by Dovecot Studios.
Based on a study in ink.
Aberdeen University Tapestry Commission Design Process
Black Doves and Snakes, which the Sibyls are often associated with, are both spiritual symbols of wisdom, transformation and the divine feminine in many cultures around the world. Similarly, shells represent the relationship to spirits such as Mami Wata and express ancient conceptions of the passage of time as a non-linear spiral that expands continually outwards.
The Sibyl Tapestry Design Drawings
Dovecot Weaver Team
Two Black Doves
As Imagined
Serpentine Flow
Tapestries on Looms at Dovecot Studios
Painting Drafts
