Gogo and her Inqawe

Medium: textile collages
Framed 77 x 99 cm
 
Cher Graham 2024
 
The Gogo with her Inqawe – a traditional smoking pipe used among the isiXhosa people. The wooden pipes are cut from the hard wood of an acacia tree and are beaded in red, white and blue. Forbidden to young women, smoking is the preserve of a mother or an older woman. This Gogo sits outside her hut calmly inhaling the tobacco smoke and contemplating life. So important is the habit of pipe smoking in the isiXhosa culture, that when somebody dies they are said to have “laid down their pipe.”