Circles on a Tunisian headscarf are known as mirrors, and their job is to bounce the evil eye away from whoever wears it. On a veil from Yemen, diamond shapes read as eyes that keep watch over the woman beneath them. Each of these protective patterns began the same way, with somebody binding the cloth tight before it ever met the dye. A new exhibition at the Museum der Kulturen Basel invites you to follow that process from the first fold.
Top Left: Work sample from Japan from before 1956; cotton, wood, cord, metal, indigo, folding clamp reserve, sekka-itajime. Bottom Left: Tie-Dye sculpture as seen in the installation "Shaped - Relief in Fabric". Right: A Boubou from Mali as featured on the "catwalk" installation.
Tie-dye: Folded, Stitched, Coloured runs until 23 January 2028, drawing on the museum's own textile collection for around 250 exhibits. Seven stations take the techniques apart one stage at a time, with the tools and materials laid out beside the finished cloth. Japanese shibori is the best known of them, and it sits alongside plangi, bāndhanī, tritik and adire, practised across Asia, South America, Europe and Africa...
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Further Information:
Tie Dye is open now at the Museum der Kulturen Basel, until 23 January 2028.
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Image Credits:
Lead: Carnival costumes of the Déjà Vü clique, dyed according to a Japanese model.
All images courtesy of the Museum der Kulturen Basel.