Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

Hadja Baratou Diallo is a well-known indigo cloth dyer in Guinea, where her exquisite cloths stand out among those made by other dyers active in the area where she works. Diallo’s innovative work points to how women cloth makers intervene in textile practices in ways that both follow broader practices and depart from them to reflect the artist’s individuality. She designed this cloth in a pattern called siiti damier that refers to the cloth’s checkerboard stitches.

Women cloth dyers working in Guinea during the late twentieth century have made indigo-dyed cloths, called gudhe ngara in Guinea, using a combination of local natural indigo and imported indigo materials. This combination points to the role of trade to inform new approaches and shifting technologies in cloth making, building on the increasing presence of plain imported fabrics across West Africa during the twentieth century.