Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: EMPIRE LINES
Episode: Thabo, Thabiso and Blackx, Araminta de Clermont (2010)
Description: Dr. Chris Spring tears up stereotypes of African textiles, through Araminta de Clermont's 2010 photograph, Thabo, Thabiso and Blackx.
Three young men wait at a bus stop near Cape Town in South Africa, clad in blankets of brilliant blue and rose red. Historically, these 'African' woven textiles were originally manufactured by Europeans during the colonial period. Dutch imperial traders, who first entered the Indian Ocean trade in the mid-seventeenth century, only added to the existing vigorous trade in textiles which had been carried out by Indian, Arab, and Chinese traders for many centuries before the arrival of Europeans...