Fashion & Fabric: Textiles, Trade & Africa

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Members: $12, Adult: $20, Students: $10

Explore Yinka Shonibare’s practices of leveraging extraordinary textiles and period clothing as cultural signifiers through a discussion between Melinda Watt, the Christa C. Mayer Thurman Curator of Textiles at the Art Institute of Chicago and historian Kirstin Purtich. Purtich will examine how global colonization plays a role in forming hybrid cultural identities and Watt will focus on the history of the textile trade including the conditions that led to the development of a West African market for “Dutch wax” cloth in the 19th century.

Image: Vlisco Textile, Snakeskin, 1922. Collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.