Santos de Todas as Bahias
As a 2024 resident at Instituto Sacatar in Bahia, Brazil, I created this piece using a traditional Yoruba indigo dyeing technique called adire eleko. In this technique, cooked cassava paste is painted onto fabric, and when it dries and the piece is dipped in the indigo vat, the paste resists the dye just so, reavealing the artist’s design. Making work with this technique is a meditative and ancestral practice for me.
Santos de Todas as Bahias tells a story about two bays -- two estuaries, specifically -- Brazil’s Bahia de Todos os Santos, and the Lagos Lagoon in Nigeria. It honors the connections between the two through time and space. It also highlights who I see as underappreciated heroes, as protectors of these historically and spiritually significant thresholds between land and sea: marine snails.