Printed Memory

My project follows the pagne, the wrapped cloth worn across Africa: a thread that crosses time and borders and becomes language, territory and memory. It arrived on the continent through trade routes, colonial movements and the return of soldiers, and it has taken root in our histories so deeply that it now seems indigenous. That certainty conceals layers of appropriation, transformation and reinvented heritage.

Through photographic portraits, I present the pagne as a silent actor in our identities. It wraps bodies, tells stories it has not lived, and becomes imbued with memory. It is at once political, intimate and aesthetic. My work sets out to unravel these contradictions and to show how an object can sometimes say more about us than words do.

The project also examines the gaze. What do we perceive when we look at a pagne: a sign of pride, an economic artifact, a colonial remnant, a mirror of our own projections? I aim to create a visual space where these readings coexist without hierarchy, where the pagne is no longer simply worn but contemplated, felt and reimagined, and where history, body and memory remain in tension rather than resolved.