Nov 16 2025 to Nov 16 2025 11:30 a.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Born in Mali and raised in France, Aboubakar Fofana is a multidisciplinary artist and designer whose practice spans calligraphy, textiles, and natural dyes. Renowned for reinvigorating and redefining traditional West African indigo dyeing techniques, Fofana’s work is rooted in a deep spiritual belief that nature is divine — that by honoring this divinity, we begin to comprehend the vast and sacred interconnectedness of the universe.

In this conversation, Fofana will reflect on indigo and others as material and metaphor — a living medium through which memory, ecology, and spirituality converge. His process engages with the natural cycles of growth and decay, birth and transformation, positioning indigo not simply as pigment but as an agent of renewal. For Fofana, the act of making becomes a form of meditation, where touch, rhythm, and the alchemy of fermentation reveal a profound dialogue between human intention and the natural world.

The talk will also offer insight into his current work in Siby, Mali, where he is creating a community-based farm that places indigenous West African indigo at the heart of a holistic permaculture system of local food, medicine, and dye plants. This ambitious project embodies his commitment to cultural preservation, environmental stewardship, and the rebirth of fermented indigo dyeing in contemporary practice.

Material, Memory, and the Sacred invites audiences to experience indigo as a spiritual practice, a bridge between craft and cosmology, where colour, earth, and devotion become inseparable.

Presented by:

Speaker

Aboubakar Fofana
Multidisciplinary Artist and Designer
Born in Mali and raised in France, Aboubakar Fofana is a multidisciplinary artist and designer whose working mediums include calligraphy, textiles and natural dyes. He is known for his work in reinvigorating and redefining West African indigo dyeing techniques, and much of his focus is devoted to the preservation and reinterpretation of traditional West African textile and natural dyeing techniques and materials.

Fofana’s work stems from a profound spiritual belief that nature is divine and that through respecting this divinity we can understand the immense and sacred universe. His raw materials come from the natural world, and his working practice revolves around the cycles of nature, the themes of birth, decay and change, and the impermanence of these materials. He sees the conception and realisation of this work as a form of spiritual practice, which is shared with his audience.

Fofana is currently deeply involved in creating a farm in conjunction with the local community in the district of Siby, Mali, in which the two types of indigenous West African indigo will be the centrepiece for a permaculture model based around local food, medicine and dye plants. This project hopes to contribute to the rebirth of fermented indigo dyeing in Mali and beyond, and represents his life’s greatest project to date.

Image credit: Jacqueline Mitelman