Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Focusing on contemporary Indigenous textiles from northern Côte d’Ivoire, this paper considers a more fluid theoretical paradigm of representation through which we can explore handwoven cloth as archive. Changes and shifts in handwoven cloth design are slow and often invisible, making it hard to assess their significance in the moment. This is further complicated by international textile collections, globalization, and market circulation within the western interior design market that condenses narrative developments embedded within the dense materiality of Indigenous handwoven textile design. Because weaving is a visual practice and requires extensive knowledge held within the mind of the weaver, intentionality is often overlooked. This paper explores contemporary textile motifs as archive out of and through the material spaces of Indigenous handwoven cloth from Côte d’Ivoire, allowing us to follow motifs as historical sources. The haptic, the visual, and the verbal frame this investigation of Indigenous design and market circulation. The haptic refers to the physicality of handwoven cloth, how the cloth’s texture and feel connect with notions of quality and authenticity. The visual moves away from an escalating linear study of textile style - aligned more with the western canon - toward one that views pattern and design as rhapsodic and circular. Finally, the verbal is considered as embedded within the dense materiality of the cloth. Textile as a material with memory, not for us to read semitonically, but rather as a way to track motif changes in recent history.