Untitled (Adire)
This new ongoing series continues my material explorations with cassava - a crop native to South America and the Caribbean - that was brought to West Africa by the Portuguese as part of the slave trade but has since become an integral part of Nigerian culture.
Beginning with my residency at the G.A.S. Foundation in Lagos and continuing as part of my year-long residency at the Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands, I’m using the traditional Nigerian tie-dye process of adire eleko, which uses cassava instead of wax as the resist for indigo dyeing, to tell the story of cassava as a counter-archive of the Columbian exchange - starting with the lives of the Arawak and Taino peoples of the Caribbean without whom I nor any other Nigerian would be able to consume the crop.
My approach to adire thus focuses on the cassava starch that is used to create the patterns and (in my case) images, which gives me the opportunity to develop what I’m calling “reverse adire” - a technique whereby I add natural pigments - from indigo to nutmeg - to the cassava so as to keep it on the cotton cloth rather than wash it off as is custom.
The use of images on adire pushes boundaries both in the field of photography and textiles; the images included are archival photographs/drawings from the 17th century onward depicting the history of cassava in South America, the Caribbean and Africa.
The artist would like to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.