This expansive canvas invites reflection on the indelible significance of indigo in West African aesthetics. Made from various plants, the pigment has been widely used across both North Africa and the Sahel region for centuries. Global demand and its labor-intensive production made it central to trade networks. In this composition, Konaté has explored the single color across the full spectrum of its intensity. The artist’s medium is industrially produced European fabric that he has transformed with dyes, cut into delicate strips, and assembled and sewn together to create a large-scale tapestry. Through his agile variation of the fringes’ length, Konaté imbues the work with a musical, rhapsodic quality.

At the source of Konaté’s inspirations are West African artistic traditions and his own childhood memories of the Sahara. Decades after formally training as a painter in Havana, Cuba, he founded a fine arts program in Bamako to mentor a new generation of artists in Mali. Konaté deploys cloth to address issues such as the roles of faith, conflict, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in contemporary society. His ambitious creations, realized with a team of assistants over the course of many months, are composed of thousands of hand-cut fabric strips. Recognized internationally, his works have been presented at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and at major contemporary art venues in Dakar, Venice, and Kassel.