Book Launch – Cut from a Bigger Cloth
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29.08.2023
Addoley Dzegede
Cut From a Bigger Cloth is funded by Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh. It reflects the path that brought Addoley to making textile work that is based primarily on the history of wax print and how Dutch manufacturers copied Indonesian batik through an industrial process, making a cloth that eventually became so identified with Africa that many don’t realize its origins.
The book is divided into sections, including photos from Addoley’s family archive of studio photographs in the years following independence in Ghana from British colonization, and one photo possibly from before (of Addoley’s great-great-grandfather). Some of the wax prints that family members and her father’s friends are wearing are still made today by Vlisco in Helmond. There is a section of risographs based on drawings she made of batiks in the Quai Branly collection and at the Victoria & Albert Museum. And there are her musings on how she became interested in these histories, trains of thought made during research trips, examples of her work over the past 7 years, as well as a section with natural dye recipes from the Colour + Conquest course she taught at Piet Zwart Institute. And, because the edition is small, it has been possible to make and include textile swatches that she has dyed as examples of different methods used in the recipes.