Here is Mud in your Eye

Mudcloth as a way for young creators to make a living.

In the mid 1970s in Bamako, Mali, a group of art students became impatient with a heavily European academic curriculum that meticulously avoided just about anything African and Malian. They were longing for ways forward into art and creativity that embraced their own culture, ways that resonated with meanings that belonged to them. Six of these students banded together to form Groupe Kasobane. The name means ‘prison is finished, we are free’, a rallying cry for their exploration of Malian heritage. Mudcloth was their chosen medium.

As Boubacar Doumbia, one of Kasobane’s founders, says, ‘We were the pioneers who explored mudcloth as a means of expression in the form of contemporary art.’ While the group’s work embraced the earthy colours of mudcloth, it expanded the visual language from geometric symbols into scenes of nature and village life. In their hands, mudcloth became a form of painting.

Mudcloth in Bambara (one of the major languages of Mali) is bogolanfini - a joining of the words for ‘mud’, ‘made with’ and ‘cloth’. Mudcloth is, indeed, made with mud, but not just any mud. The process starts with dark, iron-rich silt dredged from the Niger River. Some say that March is the best time of year to send boatmen out to the middle of the river to gather buckets of fresh sediment carried from the highlands of neighboring Guinea into Mali by spring torrents. Others, perhaps less poetically, gather it from the muck at the bottom of ponds.

Either way, the silt is decanted into large clay vessels, covered in a layer of water, and left alone for a year to ferment. Catching a glimpse of these pots of mysterious dark goo behind the home or workshop of a textile maker is not altogether uncommon in Mali: they’re often set three or four in a row into the ground, or a low adobe banco, to insulate the brew from extreme temperature changes. What’s left at the end of the fermenting and settling process is a smooth, liquid clay slip that handles like paint.

Before the advent of machine-made goods, the slip was used to dye soft, lofty hand spun African cotton fabric, woven in strips about as wide as a man’s hand, and sewn together to create blankets or panels for clothing. Strip-woven cotton is still used sometimes, though lately something akin to light cotton duck is often used instead. Cotton must be mordanted in a tannin-rich bath in order for the mud to do its dyeing work. The leaves of the nglama tree are most often used at this stage; the cloth leaves the nglama vat a bright ochreyellow colour which hardly mellows as it dries against the dry reddish earth.

Traditionally, artisans then trace ancient ideograms onto the bright yellow cloth, recalling a time almost out of memory when a bogolanfini garment telegraphed messages about its wearer. A double line of opposing zigzags means ‘the brave man’s belt’. A single tooth-like line of connected triangles means ‘the jealous husband’s teeth’. An hourglass shape represents the drum used to call warriors to battle. Women wore mudcloth too, and some ideograms recall traditionally feminine ideals. A dot within a circle describes a traditional house and the family living within it. A group of four circumflexes declares the wearer to be a woman of leisure.

In older mudcloth, these ideograms appeared against a dark mud-dyed background, requiring a bogolanfini maker to meticulously brush mud all over the background of the cloth, avoiding the geometric shapes of the ideograms. As many as four coats of mud were required to create deep black tones. In some rural communities, browns were prized over blacks, as brown provided better camouflage for hunters. This meant more layers of nglama and other tannin-based pigments and less coverage of mud. Once the dying and washing process was complete, the ideograms were whitened by brushing them with fine lines of mud dye or bleaching agent.

In the 21st century, thanks to influences like the Kasobane pioneers, creativity around mudcloth has exploded, with tourists and international buyers as principal markets. The black of mud, the browns and yellows of nglama, and the white of cotton have been joined by indigo blues, olive greens, and a host of other colours. Traditional ideograms still appear, but often in a context of freehand geometry and figural elements.

Forty years since his role in founding Kasobane, Boubacar is still focused on mudcloth as an art form, but also as a way to address Mali’s serious need for education and employment. More than 50% of the population is under 18, and the education system is weak. In 2004, Boubacar founded Ndomo, which provides entrepreneurial training as well as teaching the art of mudcloth. Ndomo’s two year apprenticeship program encourages personal savings, and emphasises a sense of community and collaboration. His program has been successful enough to be replicated in other communities in Mali, and to earn him a reputation as a social entrepreneur.

At the Ndomo facility, young people work side by side. Fine lines of mud dye are applied to yellow, brown and blue cloth with long-necked squeeze bottles. Some artists still use brushes to cover large areas in mud, but most seem to value the background colours they’ve dyed, and their pattern work doesn’t obscure them. The old ideograms pop up here and there, but so do contemporary patterns, animals, and depictions of life as it unfolds around them. Sometimes stencils are used, and sometimes there is a reversal of the old white symbols against black.

Whatever the look of the work at hand at Ndomo, the young people are making the decisions, which means the artform is alive. Creativity is in the air, and so is a hopeful feeling of purpose and self determination, making mudcloth both an ancient art form and a modern agent of social change.

Written by Keith Recker.

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Further Information:

This article was first published in Selvedge Issue 88, Geometric.

Discover more about natural dyeing traditions from around the world in Keith Recker’s True Colors: World Masters of Natural Dyes and Pigments, published by Thrums Books.

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Image Credits:

Photos: Adriaan Louw, David Crookes (Courtesy of Design Network Africa and Trevyn McGowan)