![]() These are natural colors from ingredients that are found here. Dembélé thus describes the starting point: “We have done research on traditional techniques. In the first phase, they did a survey of the raw materials and local tools used to produce colors. ![]() This way, from 1978 on, the group focused its research on natural dyes. The exchanges with classmates and future members of the collective encouraged him to experiment further with plant varieties from other parts of Mali. These circumstances enhanced his own determination to continue his ‘village’ schooling as herbalist and dyer in Bamako. Dembélé’s traditional training started accordingly, and his college experience coincided with a period of intensified activism toward decolonizing the curriculum, especially the arts and crafts syllabi. The learner acquired holistic skills that could be deployed in ordinary and emergency situations. For example, learning their properties covered the full range of possible uses: as food or decoration as medication or poison as daily stimulant or hallucinogen in special rituals and ceremonies. In the mid-1970s, interactions with other art students awakened him to the value of his early initiation to the knowledge about plants. Its forests, clearings, crop fields and grasslands provided him with an initial open-air apprenticeship as well as a lifelong learning environment. Unlike most parts of the country, the area is well watered and rich in tree and plant species. It is located at the crossroads of Bambara/Jula, Senufo and Fulani cultures. Klétigui Dembélé comes from the Minianka region in southeastern Mali bordering with Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso. In this regard, it represents a microcosm of Mali and, to some extent, West Africa, when it comes to textile and dyeing practices. Groupe Bogolan Kasobane itself included members of the Soninke, Minianka, Fulani, Dogon, Bambara, and Malinke traditions of textile production and dyeing. This is how they turned to the materials and tools used in different local traditions. Still, in order to successfully subvert the established order, the activists had to find viable alternatives. To them, the program was bound to perpetuate the path of dependency and economic extroversion inherited from the colonial era. However, beyond material considerations, the return to the roots was a daring act of cultural self-assertion and intellectual responsibility on the part of the younger generation. By that time, with the economic crisis deepening after the great droughts of 1972-1974, imported material became too expensive, and the supply lines uncertain. One of them, Groupe Bogolan Kasobane – five men and one woman – advocated the introduction of textile and dyeing traditions into the visual arts curriculum. ![]() In the spirit of the time, some formed collectives to experiment with new techniques based on ancient practices. To date, many of its graduates have become internationally renowned artists and musicians. It became an art college in 1963 and quickly turned into a center of excellence for young music and visual art students. Created in 1933, the National Institute of the Arts itself was initially a center dedicated to training in arts and crafts in the colony then called ‘French Sudan’. As he attended the National Institute of the Arts in the 1970s, practices in graphic arts, kept in lockstep with the French syllabus, still relied heavily on imported material, tools and techniques: canvass and other art paper, watercolor, paintbrush, etc. As a founding member of the ‘Groupe Bogolan Kasobane’, he belongs to the generation of Malian art students, who, after independence, rebelled against the curriculum inherited from the colonial school system. How did this space of diverse and complementary livelihood practices associated with indigo come to public attention? Who were the protagonists in Mali?īorn in Zerbala, Koutiala (Sikasso), in southern Mali, Klétigui Dembélé is a pioneer plastic artist and herbalist. Yet, exploring the technical, economic, social and spiritual dimensions of indigo cultivation, processing, dyeing, and commercialization beyond the few artisanal households has been a very recent phenomenon in the region. The ‘indigo arc’ spans the savannah region of a historical heartland, in which migration, trade, and the continuous introduction and adaptation of new tools and techniques structured relationships of economic and social interdependency. To some extent, it has fashioned some trade routes crisscrossing today’s West Africa: from the Guinea-Mali road in the southwest to the Mali-Burkina-Côte d’Ivoire triangle in the south and center. Indigo, in particular, has played a pivotal role in structuring an endogenous value chain in local and regional systems of production. Indigo, as well as other dyeing plants, constitute the foundation of traditional textile production in Mali.
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