For over 500 years these dyers of kano have made their impact on the world. Merchants from Egypt to Mali have all trekked down to the great city to kano to have a feel of the famous purple cotton of kano. A great source of cultural pride, a means of livelihood, a great historical piece now risk going into extinction. Or shortly the would be lost forever is a research/ performance/ installation project that celebrates this cultural and material heritage through the prism of contemporary art.
This piece takes as a starting point my interest in the practicality and materiality of Movement systems. i will explore the performance experience of gestures, actions, materials and techniques that underlies the creation of dye-cloths in the Kofar Mata dye pits. In a solo research/performance project centered around the performance and archiving of movement systems, I attempt to investigate the varieties of movement and gestural histories in the Kofar Mata dyeing techniques , and how they become embedded in the material objects of artworks.
The research/performance project will make reference to key artistic and historical practices at the Kofar Mata dye pits to redefine our understanding of intangible heritage to include concepts of gestures and actions, as well as the materials, social knowledge and the communal spaces attached to it.
