Amanda M. Maples has curated an exhibition and authored a publication on Senegalese gold jewelry for the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. Entitled Good as Gold: Fashioning Senegalese Women, the project explores the golden adornment as part of a larger dialogic constellation of identity, nationhood, politics, wealth, and individual taste. Using the Wolof concept of sañse as a framework, the jewelry is presented as a fragment of a self-fashioning that is constantly changing, on a regional and global scale—a kaleidoscopic ensemble that takes into consideration a network of interconnected meanings and associations that is largely driven by women. Significantly, the exhibition and publication will feature a newly-created ensemble by renowned Senegalese fashion designer Oumou Sy that brings together contemporary fashion and historic sartorial expressions.
The exhibition is set to open at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art on October 24, 2018. The full-length publication will follow in Spring 2019.