Janet’s closest collaboration has been with members of the Groupe Bogolan Kasobane, a group of six artists who have been working together for many years. Their collaboration stems from their strikingly similar worldview across culture and across education. They have let each other into their lives, artistic process so all are simultaneously researcher and subject. They are all about the same age. They are all interested in cultural preservation, researching history and preserving it by bringing the ideas, forms, techniques of the past forward into the present and the future. The results of the collaboration can be seen in artwork, published articles, photographs, video, ideas, and friendships.
The larger project, as yet unrealized, is to find the means to establish a museum/cultural center in Bamako to house the world class collection of beads, textiles and other artifacts so that they could be of service to artists, researchers, visitors and most importantly Malian youth. A first step would be the funding to conduct an inventory.
Published articles include:
Using the Past to Sculpt the Costume of the Future
The Poetics of Cloth
The Language of Beads