Indigo Weaving: Threads Between Elu and Aizome

Paper Abstract: The current presentation proposes the study of indigo-dyed textiles from the Yoruba and Japanese traditions, considering the network of multiple human and non-human actors in the creative processes and textile productions. Originally, Yoruba Adire textiles were dyed in indigo from the leaves of the Lonchocarpus Cyanescens plant. Since the 1920s, with synthetic dyes introduction, production and meanings have changed. Adire has always been a way of telling tales, and it continues to be so. Indigo (elu in yoruba) continues to be connected to sacred and protective dimensions. In Japan, indigo or Ai (藍) also has a spiritual, ancestral dimension. In the main island Persicaria tinctoria, a plant native to East Asia, is used to produced the composted form of sukumo (蒅). The case studies involve field research from Nigeria and Japan and a survey of theories and epistemologies of the respective contexts. I seek to inscribe other dimensions in the history of art, undoing categorizations and separations between art and craft, nature and culture, subject and object through epistemological approaches to Yoruba Japanese and diasporic knowledges.Thus, proposing a paradigm shift and an investigation into art history and creative processes that analyze more-than-human actors in their configuration, including fabric, indigo dyeing, the creation of patterns as creations produced by a complex network of actors - humans, plants, bacteria, substances, the tissue itself, deities and spirits as agents.