Nigeria
Hello, I'm Adaeze
Okonkwo
I am an Adire artist. I work with Yoruba resist-dyeing traditions that are older than memory. Silk is the newest surface I have brought them to.
Adaeze Okonkwo is a Lagos-based textile artist whose work draws from Yoruba cosmology and the sacred geometry of Adire cloth. Trained under her grandmother in Abeokuta — the spiritual home of Yoruba indigo dyeing — she translates ancestral symbols into contemporary expressions on silk. Her designs carry the living memory of Egúngún, of markets, of the Oshun river.
I learned resist-dyeing from my grandmother in Abeokuta. She used cassava paste and her hands. I use the same paste, but now I ask: what if the fabric were silk instead of cotton? What if the indigo were pomegranate rind instead of synthetic blue? When Navohi sent me a sample of Shaki silk for the first time, I held it for a long time before I touched the dye. The thread was different. It moved differently. It received the colour differently — deeper, quieter, like it was listening. I carved my first galib from a piece of linden wood I found at a market in Lagos. Then I carved a second one. Then I carved ten. The Yoruba geometry of Adire is very precise — every angle means something. I wanted the wood to carry that precision the way my grandmother’s hands carried it. I have not yet been to Shaki. But I know that when I arrive and watch Narmin Hasanova press a galib into silk, I will understand something about my grandmother that I never had words for before.
— Adaeze Okonkwo, Lagos, Nigeria
The motif
Adire Eleko — Yoruba resist geometry
Nigeria · Abeokuta · cassava-paste resist
The Adire Collection
The Adire Collection
Adire resist-dyeing on silk · 25 pieces
25 pieces
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