Steve Turner is pleased to present Breaking Tradition: Late 20th Century Malian Wedding Textiles, an exhibition featuring eight brightly colored strip-woven, figurative textiles that, to our knowledge, is the first exhibition to focus solely on the subject. Representing a dramatic break with this centuries old tradition in Mali which historically favored indigo and white cotton or brown wool blankets, these works present a new approach to the genre of wedding textiles. Depicting people and animals, they were used to adorn the walls of houses during weddings and as covers for the newly imported iron beds. Following the 1968 military coup, soldiers also became a prevalent theme. Similar works have been included in overview exhibitions of African textiles, including the often-cited exhibition Art of…