Colour as Memory: The Work of Aboubakar Fofana
Image of Aboubakar Fofana’s natural dye work by François Goudier.
Blue is not just a colour; it is a legacy. For Aboubakar Fofana, it embodies earth, ancestry, and the unseen life thriving beneath our feet.
The Malian-born, France-raised artist and dyer has dedicated over three decades to reviving one of West Africa's most intricate and spiritual traditions: whole-leaf indigo dyeing. His art transcends mere creativity; it stands as a powerful act of restoration. Engaging with land, plants, and microbes, he reconnects the threads of cultural knowledge that colonialism once sought to sever.
At the heart of his process lies the indigo vat, a vibrant ecosystem that he carefully nurtures and observes. Constructed using dried leaves from indigenous West African plants, the vat transforms through fermentation, with bacteria—Fofana's "collaborators"—activating the pigment. These tiny organisms, though invisible, are crucial to the outcome. He listens to their needs, feeding them porridge, figs, and honey, and paying close attention to scent, texture, and the rise of the "indigo flower" on the surface, which reveals their health. “It’s a living organism,” he emphasises. “You need to assess daily how healthy your bacteria are.”
This meticulous attention starkly contrasts with commercial dyeing, where synthetic methods dominate. His approach embraces complexity, declaring, "The complexity of the process ensures that my production potential will always be limited.”
His way of working is a quiet rejection of extractive thinking. It begins with the planting of indigo leaves and cotton. Next comes the harvesting of these crops; the extraction of the colour and spinning of the cotton threads; the weaving of the cloth and the stitching of resists to create patterns; all the while preparing vats and tending the bacteria they contain; and then the dyeing and re-dyeing of the fibre. The final stage is the unstitching of the resists to reveal the design. Yet each step is an offering in its own right—more than a means to an end. The soul of Fofana’s work lies in the singularity of each moment—each stage exists uniquely, as a fingerprint does.
Photo by François Goudier
While his creative process helps heal ecological systems, it also revives cultural ones. Many of Mali’s dyeing techniques were disrupted or lost during colonial rule. As foreign powers took control of the cotton trade, they suppressed local cotton varieties and marginalised traditional dyeing methods that could not be scaled or exploited. Whole-leaf indigo dyeing, which relies on careful microbial balance and embodied skill, was deemed inefficient and set aside.
When Fofana began his journey, this knowledge had all but vanished. He travelled across Mali, Guinea, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire in search of those who still remembered the techniques. In many cases, he found only fragments—some held in oral memory, others preserved in colonial archives not intended for his use. He studied these remnants and brought them back to life through practice.
Western narratives about indigo often overlook West Africa's contributions, reducing centuries of expertise to footnotes or omitting them altogether. Fofana challenges this absence by reframing indigo as not just a dye but a carrier of ancestral knowledge—knowledge that was never dependent on Western validation to exist. By centring African plants, processes, and spiritual frameworks, his work becomes an act of decolonisation. He restores meaning to colour, positioning it not as a trend or product but as a living history embedded in soil, memory, and place. In doing so, he disrupts dominant narratives about where value originates—and who gets to define it.
He is particularly critical of how African knowledge enabled the flourishing of indigo in the Americas—without recognition. While colonisers transported scalable techniques of Indian indigo pigment dyeing, it was enslaved Africans who brought the agricultural and technical understanding that made indigo a viable industry in the New World. Their skills were exploited while their identities were erased.
His method counters this silencing. Every piece he creates is steeped in memory. “My grandmother was a healer,” he says. “She believed that plants offered not only their physical properties but also their souls.” His indigo cloth carries that belief forward—infused not just with colour, but with presence.
To witness his work is to encounter blue not as surface but as story: a system that breathes, remembers, and resists. His commitment to working slowly, to respecting microbial life, and to honouring ancestral techniques is not just a creative stance—it is a political one.
Fofana reminds us that colour can be knowledge. And when we slow down to see it, blue becomes a way of remembering.
“My ancestors led me to indigo because it was necessary for both of us to begin a healing – healing for myself and on behalf of my ancestors and my people. I cannot discuss my ideas of blue without discussing the history of the colour as it relates to my people, and without discussing our erasure from our own creations. For me, the blue of indigo is symbolic of many things, many deeply spiritual connections within my homeland. But it is also deeply symbolic of what colonialism has done to my region and my people, and to lands and societies elsewhere. I can talk about blue as a colour, as a shade, as an idea, as a spiritual practice.”
Photo by François Goudier
Featuring
Aboubakar Fofana
Indigo dyer, artist, textile designer, calligrapher, and teacher. Fofana is best known for his sublime indigo and mineral mud-dyed textiles. His work bridges spirituality, ecology, and heritage through a practice rooted in natural materials and ancestral techniques
SOURCES
• Tatter Journal – Beyond the Blueness
• documenta 14 – Aboubakar Fofana
• Disegno Journal – Aboubakar Fofana: Indigo Dyeing in Mali
Photography
François Goudier
Words
Nina Zulian