 Hi, welcome to Cooper Hewitt's symposium, part one, Fashion, Cultures, Futures. I'm happy to be here with you all. This is the panel Sustainable Fashion Practice from Africa to North America. And I am Teju. I am a Jamaican-American poet, researcher, writer, and geographer based in Oakland, California, which is the unceded territory of the Ohlone people, the Chichenyo speaking Ohlone people specifically. And I'm happy to be here with Tahir. We had a third panelist, Abrima, who unfortunately was unable to be here. She's had a family emergency, so please send her some positive vibes and please follow and support her amazing work at Studio 189. And I will pass it over to Tahir to introduce himself as well. Hi, Tahir. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Tahir Karamali. I'm a visual artist born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya. Currently practicing in Green Point, Brooklyn. And I would really like to thank the Cooper Hewitt for inviting me to be part of this amazing panel and sending out positive vibes to Abrima. And hopefully everything would turn out favorably. Thanks for the introduction, Tahir. Wonderful. So we're gonna get started. And what I wanna do is just give a little bit of an overview of some of the topics that intersect with the panel today. And I wanna talk about black textile cultures and the lineages that have migrated as results. Part of what I do as a geographer is connect the dots between geographies and cultural practice and art and what that means for how we understand our present day experience and the futures that are possible that are more sustainable and equitable. So when we think about the fashion industry, current fashion industry, one of the main things that we think about are supply chains. And I think about supply chains very often, especially being a geographer. And so supply chain is very generally defined as the sequence of processes involved in the production and distribution of a commodity. And one of the foundational supply chains to our current fashion global industry is a triangular trade, which is a very specific supply chain, which is an economic and historical term indicating trade among three port regions. And more specifically, the transatlantic triangular trade, which was between Europe, the West Coast of Africa and the Americas. This was a three stage process. And the first stage of this process in the supply chain was tropical Africans were enslaved and forcibly taken to the Americas to work on plantations. And then the production part of the supply chain was that the raw materials and natural resources were extracted by the slaves as a labor force and sent to Europe to be manufactured into finished goods, which brings us to the distribution part of the commodities, which is these manufactured products from Europe, which are traded on the West Coast and the desert coasts of Africa for the enslaved Africans who created the production, right? So it's a circular trade, a triangular trade, a supply chain that involves processes, production and distribution of commodities. And what we know to be true, which is also true in the current fashion industry is that the distribution and commodities is what generates the most profit and the first two levels of the supply chain, the extraction of raw materials and the processing of those raw materials and the extraction of those raw materials generally are not the most profitable parts of the supply chain, generally the more devalued part of the supply chain and generally, as we know with the triangular trade where black and brown bodies are abused and experienced violence. So let's talk about processes, fashion processes, textile processes. I wanna start with some indigenous African textile cultural processes. So tropical West Africa as early as the 10th, 11th century was a center of cotton production and more generally textile culture. It was a center for creating natural fibers using the materials that were around there, cotton group runnerly and family kinship compounds, fiber like bark cloth, which was made from bark and raffia, which was also made from a type of bark tree were common processes that were used across Africa and specifically in tropical West Africa. And in terms of cotton, which was really one of the main textile fabrics that was used there. There was a very small long artisanal process involved in creating some of the textiles and fabrics that were made from cotton such as weft and weft is a popular textiles design out of tropical Africa. It has to do with adding patterns to a ground weave and this ground weave was usually made out of cotton. And so the way that these fabrics were made was that the cotton seeds were planted usually in family compounds, but specifically with the heel of the foot into the soil to disturb the soil less. And as you know, if you're interested in permaculture, one of the main principles is to disturb the soil less. So there was this indigenous practice of using your heel in order to do that to plant the seed. And then as the seed grew and it was picked, it was separated by hand or with a comb-like tool from the seeds. And it's very difficult to separate the cotton from the seeds, which is why the cotton gin was so popular. But before the cotton gin, like centuries before the cotton gin, tropical West Africans created this tool where you comb the fibers out and they are extracted from the seeds. And then finally it was spun on a ceramic spindle, which they usually made out of the clay from the earth and then woven on a loom that was usually made out of tree bark. So this whole process was very long, very slow and really about working with the earth, with the soil, with what's around you, rather than mass producing. And even though cotton was used for trade, as far as Madagascar, the sustainable indigenous practices were used for centuries in the process of cultivating cotton and creating this rich textile culture. Similarly, mudcloth, which we know as a popular design now was a mainstay in tropical African cultures for thousands of years. And the cloth was usually cotton and it was dyed with fermented mud, indigo or other plants, whatever other plants were around. And now we know mudcloth as a very popular design that we see in modern decor. And it's largely divorced from this very indigenous slow practice of dyeing cotton based fabric with designs and with plants. So this intergenerational thousand years long history of natural fiber cultivation, harvesting and artisanal weaving among indigenous Africans was invaluable to European colonialists who needed skilled enslaved labor to make their profit crop model possible in the Americas. So it wasn't just that this was labor that was cheap labor. It was that it was skilled labor. It was skilled in terms of textiles, in terms of agriculture. And so these skills and some of these traditions traveled across the Atlantic, along with the 12 million Africans who were forced into slavery and taken across this ocean to points in the Caribbean, Latin America and North America. And some of the ways this textile and agricultural ingenuity migrated across the ocean was from very radical practices of hiding seeds in hair, hiding seeds in clothes or pockets wherever you could. The way that rice started growing and being planted in North Carolina and South Carolina was that women who had been enslaved braided some rice seeds into their hair and carried it off of the slave ships and planted it in their slave plots. And planters were having a hard time with cotton and tobacco because of how specific the soil was in the Carolinas. They noticed that Africans were growing rice on their plots and started planting rice as a plantation crop. So this ingenuity, this agricultural skill set was taken across and migrated across the ocean and was brought into the production aspect of the foundation of the supply chain. So we as in black people were at the foundation in every level of the supply chain from seed to sow, specifically with cotton but also with other fibers like hemp and wool as well. Cotton however was the first luxury commodity in the US before anything. Cotton was a luxury crop for centuries that had been known as a special crop that did not grow in Europe and Europeans were trying to get their hand on it. So the slave market, plantation slave trade allowed them to create this cash crop commodity of cotton. More than 70% of all slave black people in the South worked on cotton plantations by 1860. So most of the folks who were enslaved in this country were specifically cultivating, harvesting, producing cotton which created the Great Britain to dominate the global textile industry which previously was dominated by India. The Indus Valley being the origin of the cotton plant and being one of the first places that cotton was turned into fiber. So previous to plantation slavery and the cultivation of cotton in the Americas the Indian subcontinent was the largest producer of cotton. And because of the cheap labor that made cotton profitable for Great Britain they were able to dominate this textile market through industrialization and factories. And this really created the fashion industry in the US but also created the foundation for the US economy more generally banks were invested in cotton all kinds of industries were invested in cotton in the US. And so all of this was done through the colonization of Africa which was continuing to take place the enslavement of black Africans in the Americas and the mass cultivation production and trade of cotton in the Americas. And so the colonialism that created this structure really transformed the planet and the global economy. Colonial powers tried to eradicate traditional indigenous textile ways through centralizing textile productions. However, as we know this lineages migrated, evolved, developed and have even been in some cases subsumed into mainstream American culture. So through plantation slavery and the mass production of textiles like cotton, like hemp and other crops like tobacco soil erosion was created across the US South and in Haiti by time Haiti won independence from France in 1804 most of their land was no longer arable due to the plantation economy. There was mass deforestation which took away some of the climate stabilizers such as forests and trees. There was the increasing of natural disasters because there was less natural cover from forests and other biodiversity and with monocultural economies such as plantation economies that means that there is this eradication of some of the diversity in plants. So colonialism transformed the planet in order to create this globalized fashion economy that was based on this very violent supply train starting with the triangular trade. However, black ingenuity will become black people will become the black diaspora. I've used some of these indigenous influences and these indigenous skills to innovate in the Americas. And so within these violent modes of colonial production indigenous African ingenuity formed a black diaspora identity which was largely based on craftsmanship. So in Jamaica, my home country enslaved African women created lace from the legata tree which is also known as a lace bark tree. So they would peel out the inside of the bark they would stretch it out and starch it and bleach it and leave it in the sun and it would create this lace-like material. And so they would weave, crochet, knit this lace-like material into these beautiful dresses and sort of ornate pieces, shawls that they would wear. And so even though the clothing that they were given as enslaved people was mostly scraps of fabric, cotton fabric, they were able to create this lace-like material to give themselves some luxury in the midst of this violence. And they understood how to create cloth from the bark cloth cultures in tropical West Africa but also they learned from the Arawak and Taino indigenous people who were using this lace bark to create rope, to create baskets, to create other types of utilitarian products and enslaved people created lace and slave masters use this fiber actually for whips but now this culture of weaving and knitting and crocheting and lacing is so much a part of Jamaica, so much a part of Caribbean culture. And now these crocheted knit dresses like Rihanna wore in her work video are popular in mainstream fashion and really are part of this lineage of ingenuity of enslaved African women. And of course the journey truth, one of the most iconic images we see of her is her holding knitting needles. She always wanted to be photographed with knitting needles and actually she spun about 100 pounds of wool into homespun yarn to buy her freedom. She was enslaved, born into slavery and quilting is another popular craft that is traditionally American. I grew up with quilting culture. Harriet Powers who was born into slavery was one of the first women to be recognized as a quilting artist. Her quilt was exhibited at the Athens Cotton Fair in Georgia in 1886. And of course now we have popular artists like Faith Ringgold who make quilts about her experience growing up in Harlem in New York that reflect black culture, that reflect black life. And C. Lee Pettiswold quilter I recently interviewed in Louisiana who makes quilts using scraps of African fabric to think about her own creolized African culture and even fashion designers. This is Leon Bridges a singer in Bode who created a quilted pattern jacket. So it's in fashion now and this black tradition usually held by women has been continued through generations and we now also see it in mainstream art and fashion culture. So when we think about the distribution side of fashion the distribution side of textile culture we see heavy exclusion currently and in the past of black people. Black people along with the continent of Africa more broadly have been overlooked, excluded or completely ignored in the current fashion economy even though we have always been central to the cultural production and the value chain still we have always found a way to disrupt the status quo and insert ourselves and insert our value into all aspects of the supply chain. And of course Cooper Hewitt is currently celebrating and honoring Willie Smith who was really seen as an anomaly in the mainstream because he was the most commercially successful African-American designer in the 80s but he was clearly inspired by his black American upbringing and specifically the women in his life and we know that women in black culture really transmit this culture across generations and specifically his sister Tuki who was his muse. So his ideas of function, collaboration and performance art really exemplified his brand distribution model which was clothing for the everyday people in the 70s he went to India to start Willie Ware to figure out how to create the designs that he wanted that were based on function, based on what he saw in his everyday life what he saw when he was traveling through India. And so one of the things that Willie has known to have said is that for most of these designers who have to run to Paris for color and fabric combinations should go to church on Sunday in Harlem. So again understanding black life as inspiration and knowing that black life is one of the ways that these crafts that have now been adopted into mainstream culture have come from in recognizing these lineages. So what does this mean for futures? Which is also what we're talking about last week along with an organization called C2Shirt we launched a campaign called Rerepresent Us which is a limited edition t-shirt line with organic cotton from farmers in Burkina Faso processed and sewn in a carbon neutral facility in Kenya printed at a black woman owned shop in Georgia and having four designs by black national and international artists vertically integrated and distributed by C2Shirt. So we created a sustainable t-shirt line through a completely black diaspora supply chain from seed to sew. And so this is an example of the types of fashion futures that we're seeing as a continuation of these legacies of African cultural textile traditions as well as the future of fashion and recognizing that black people have always represented ourselves in these industries and always affirmed our own value in these industries. And of course recognizing the way that art again asserts blackness into the future. This was an art piece by Alicia B. Wormsley there are black people in the future. And of course my other two panelists Abrima and Tahir who are representative of the fashion design in our futures that are happening here now. So again, unfortunately Abrima can't be with us but I'm gonna pass it over to Tahir to talk a little bit more about his practice and the way he understands some of these concepts. Tahir, please take it away. Hi, thank you. I'm really happy that you chose that photo. That's a great photograph. Thank you for choosing that one. Okay, I'm Tahir Karamalli and today I'm going to talk to you about one of my projects called Strata which is inspired by the Kuba cloth textile that is found in the Kuba kingdom in the Congo. So my first fascination with this textile was within the museological context. Definitely with regards to how it's displayed in museums and how it is very much a coveted item and a coveted textile that is owned by a majority of museums across the United States. So here's an image from the Brooklyn Museum Archive and over here at NCMA, the North Carolina Museum of Art. So Kuba cloth is like primarily uses these sort of mathematical and geometric patterns which has sort of like prevailed throughout a lot of African textiles. But what's really unique and very interesting about it is the process of how this particular textile was made. And looking at them, they definitely give you this very much modernist sort of painting something that you would think would come out from contemporary post-World War art. But definitely these objects have been made way beyond that dating back to the 1600s. So just to give you some geographical reference, this here is the Congo, the DRC. And here, this black spot right here would be what would be what was the Kuba kingdom in the Congo, right here next to the Sankuru River and the Kasai. And if we move on to the next. So Kuba cloth is typically made by a fabric that is sourced from Raffia. And so Raffia is a palm product that is essentially sort of like stripped down and turned into these sort of like long fibers. And then using the warp and weft method, they are these fibers are woven together. Once these fibers are woven together, the textile is then beaten so that it is actually given this very soft textile. So it feels more like a cotton rather than sort of what you typically understand Raffia or somewhat of like a rougher textile. So the Kuba cloth itself is incredibly soft and incredibly malleable and it actually sits on the body very well. Typically used for adornments or body adornments for skirts, also for wall works as well. So the Kuba cloth not necessarily was only used for body adornment or dressing or for ceremonial use but also used for decorative use as well within the kingdom itself. And specifically for the backdrops for a lot of the kings and like the reigning king at the times. And it is dyed with this very specific type of plant which is tool, which is a tropical plant that you typically find in the jungle and in sort of like dense jungle areas. And it produces this sort of like reddish brown dye which sometimes is mixed with palm oil for, excuse me, ceremonial purposes, right? And what the belief was is that this particular plant harbored a, like harbored a power or a sort of healing to it that would be imbued inside the textile as well. So it was not only just used for its dye process but also its perceived ability to transfer healing or transfer some level of spirituality to the actual object itself. This is an installation of the Brooklyn Museum so that you can see sort of better how it is displayed in the museological context. I specifically referenced this because I'm really interested in how these particular fabrics are displayed here in the Western world and specifically here in New York City and in museums because they are often sort of seen detached from what its typical use would be within the Kuba kingdom, the Kuba nation necessarily. And so I'm interested in how they are cased and how they are treated. These textiles are not light fast at all. And they, because it's made from Rapha and they've been beaten quite rigorously, they tend to disintegrate. So the period to be able to see these textiles is often very short. So a lot of museums would actually have these textiles rotating. So it's actually incredibly lucky if you ever do get to see one of these textiles in person in real life. And this is an example of how one of the Kuba kings would wear the textile over here. And then you can also see sort of like panels of skirting and also panels that are for sort of like interior adornment. So transferring on to the Kuba cloth in contemporary sort of trade. We see Kuba cloth a lot sort of in companies like restoration hardware where you would now see them sort of adorn them, use the fabric to adorn like bedding or pillows or also wall work. So it's actually sort of translated not necessarily correctly, but it kind of translated in a way that is to what the people would have been using the textile for anyways. So I was really interested personally as an artist as to like how this textile comes to being and how we treat this textile and what the process of making this textile is. And then kind of looking at what our relationship to the Congo is right now and what kind of trade is happening in the Congo right now. And one thing that I am very interested in just like Teju is the supply chain and more specifically the supply chain of technology and our contemporary lifestyle. So one particular issue that we're facing specifically in the Congo is the cobalt mines. So cobalt mines, and if you don't know what cobalt is it's a mineral that, sorry it's a heavy metal that's used primarily for cell phone batteries. And these batteries use quite a lot of cobalt and a lot of cobalt does come from the Congo through these somewhat illegal mines and somewhat legal mines as well. And one particular issue is that a lot of children work in these mines because of like how narrow they are to sort of like pull out the cobalt from the mine itself. And here's another image of what the mines kind of look like because they have to destroy a lot of the forests, they have to destroy quite a bit of jungle to just unearth this particular mineral. And when we talk about the supply chain you can see here how the mining sort of starts here in the DRC and this particular material would move across East Africa into China and then refined in China and then distributed and then finally the end product ends up here in the US in the form of an Apple iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy Note or a Windows Surface object. So a lot of us unknowingly are holding a piece of Africa in our pocket every day. So with knowing this and kind of using the lessons that I learned from not only the museological sort of display of cobalt cloth but also the process of making cobalt cloth and also the knowledge of the supply chain of cobalt I started to work with a village very close to the Kasai province to create undied Rafia textiles that I later imbued with the cobalt that I would buy from, well, I would source from dead cell phone batteries off of eBay. So I would get a bunch of cell phone batteries and extract the cobalt and then just how they would use the tool and the sort of sense of power that is sort of imbuing the textile is to actually sort of like create an object that sort of describes our history with the supply chain specifically to do with cobalt and also the slow degradation of classical cobalt cloth production and just to give you a quick reference this is actually how cobalt and the lithium ion batteries sort of looks like the cobalt is actually attached to this copper foiling and that copper foiling is then what I pull out and extract the cobalt and also so impart some of the carbon and the lithium as well and I create a sort of this essentially which is then I oxidize and I turn that into a cobalt dye sort of supplement. And so the word strata really kind of references sort of like the rock but also references history and sort of like talking about this kind of recurring histories of like extraction of material from Africa whether it be people or also in regards to the Congo rubber and other materials that are just sort of like pulled from the continent without any sort of like remorse whatsoever. So a lot of the objects themselves are sort of like layered or reference shrouding or death or sort of like hung bodies on the wall or in some sense kind of this blanket type quilting references as well about how we discuss our history and how we put that into the textile and view it. Personally, I did not want to appropriate necessarily the Kuba Kingdom's way of using geometry as a style I just wanted to really kind of show the staining of this dye onto the textile itself because I feel that the textile as a carrying material harbored enough sort of like weight to it that when it is stained and it is sort of like place these like sheets of copper on it that it kind of creates a sort of like abstract landscape feel onto the textile but also gives it the sort of like weighted body feel. So you're not necessarily kind of looking into the object for a geometric or musical reference but you're actually looking at sort of like a landscape reference and sort of a treatment to the textile rather than sort of an adornment of the textile while the Kuba people definitely were concentrated on the textile as an adornment piece but I'm more thinking about the textile as something that is like harboring a staining from our history. Okay. And so that is me. That was very interesting, incredibly interesting and I wanna ask you some questions before we open it up to audience questions. The first question I have is just how did you get interested in this specific Kuba textile culture? Like how did you come to find this particular textile and go to understand more about the research? I would love to know more about that. I have always been really interested in textiles and a lot of my work references like fiber and textile and I was, when I moved to New York City and I went to the Mets and I was expecting there to be like a really large like, you know Africa or East Africa, you know and it's this tiny little dinky room that they have. It's like really small but what grabbed my eye was the Kuba cloth itself, right? Like the way that it's treated in the museum, it was just, because it's such a fragile textile and it's something that is so coveted it was so interesting for me to see it and I was just taken by the geometry and the breaks in the geometry and artistically just sort of like the execution of those textiles are gorgeous because the hands though like a lot of these textiles to give it like a little bit of like tufting and it's like hand tufting in these geometries it's not easy and these things date, you know 1635 to like 17, you know, they're very old and I really was taken by them and when I started to learn more about the textile and when I started getting into sort of like making my own textiles I was also doing a lot of research with regards to the cobalt supply chain and then that just kind of like clicked together it just seemed like, oh, this is a contemporary issue that I can use a process to actually discuss something that can be also making commentary about like the museological display of like African textiles as well Does that make sense? Yes, and my next question is sort of about that some of those processes I think it's important that you mention this sort of centuries long and continual extraction from Africa but also this like consumption of Africa that we all have Africa in our pockets or even the idea that most artifacts from the content and earn museums in Europe and the US and I wonder if you could talk about especially as an artist this idea of the types of extraction the extraction of raw materials, the extraction of culture maybe even the extraction of artists in the museum context, thoughts about that? Yeah, I do have thoughts about that especially with regards to sort of artists and how some artists are allowed to perform in the museum context to sort of like give light to certain issues and also to sort of like also silence other issues which is sort of like defeats the purpose of inviting artists and like whenever they do this sort of every few years it's the Africa exhibition contemporary African art exhibition and then how they decide to sort of like frame that work is very specific and how they extract these ideas and then move those artists to Western institutions so that they can actually capitalize on that is something that I think about a lot and something that I'm also personally in conflict about but with regards to just materials in general a lot of people are just completely unaware as to firstly where Africa is which is like a problem I was at my local bar and I asked people to name three African countries and it's like two, like Egypt is what you get Egypt, Morocco, Egypt, Morocco and I hear that and they've gotten those emails that's what they understand that you're gonna be Yeah, exactly or Somalia, you know because yeah, so there is just a general ignorance and they think that Africa doesn't really have anything to offer the world but have like high key just been profiting off of the continent and the landscape for the longest time and it's deliberately engineered that way that a lot of people around the world are constantly gonna perceive African people as sort of in the backseat and as something that it's a continent that constantly needs development and that's actually how that entire system works is because everyone believes that Africa constantly needs development and then while they do that they just exploit everything they just like pull everything from under you and you don't really realize it because nobody necessarily wants to talk about these complicated histories anymore. Yeah, and also I think history advised in that it is largely from a Western view or at least mainstream history is largely from a Western view so when you think about the history of cotton which I was recently doing research on for like thousands of years Europe was not a part of cotton. Next out there was supply chains and trades where Europe was minimal if even involved at all and so even the way we understand the history of production most of our feelings about supply chains are from a Western perspective and so necessarily Africa is gonna be seen as this place that needs constant development rather than this place that for centuries has produced most of the world's agricultural developments So I know we have some questions from the audience so I just wanna ask one more question which is not a super complicated question and then I'll open up to the audience which is since this Cuba textile is made for mostly natural materials you mentioned that it disintegrates when it disintegrates is it able to go back to the earth without poisoning the earth as a result? Not mine because it has cobalt in it. Yeah, I mean technically it is oxidized and can be but the way that that has to be treated is very different. But yes, no, with the tool dies and with the Raffia that naturally goes back in and that's actually one of the most interesting things about the museological sort of display of these textiles is that they're actually designed to disintegrate, right? They're designed so that we know that there's gonna be another King coming we know that there's gonna be another representative coming we know that something is happening it is actually a textile that works in congruence with the society and with how the Cuba kingdom operates, right? So these things naturally sort of disintegrate and they are like ephemeral objects, right? So the way that we treat them now is this sort of like holding onto a history that largely has been eradicated because of colonialism and we're just kind of like holding onto these sort of like remnants of memory because a lot of the kingdom has like largely been destroyed. So that's also kind of a huge part of that commentary is this kind of like sort of treasured object that is supposed to actually disintegrate. Yeah, and this idea of impermanence like part of the museum and Western culture is this idea of something being entrenched forever and most things in life are impermanent. So let me... I mean, permanence gives me anxiety. That's a change. It just gives me a lot of anxiety. I'm just saying I like impermanence, that's fine. I can deal with that. I agree with that. Yeah. So we have one question. I don't know if you have the answer to this. I don't know if I have the answer to this. Where did the process of wax print originate? How did the Dutch come to dominate this textile industry? Okay, so you should definitely look at Yankee Shinabara's work. I think like Yankee's work has definitely like talks about this, but from my dealings with the research with regards to sort of like Vlisco and like these sort of major wax prints, batik textiles, it actually originated from Indonesia and the Dutch has colonized Indonesia. And that process was taken to the Netherlands and then no one in the Netherlands really wanted that. And the market that actually wanted that was predominantly West Africa. Okay, next question. Where can we learn more about plants and trees being used in fashion or to create textiles? One resource that maybe comes to mind that I have used is called African Textiles by John Mack. And he goes through some of the traditional indigenous African textile cultures, all of which are from trees and plants. And to make sure you have some other resources. There are a few, I just can't remember them offhand. Definitely a lot of textile books on African textile for sure, especially about like heritage textiles. And also I feel like there is an online resource that you can use that is escaping me, but I will find that out and then I'll let you know. And also like before 1960, a lot of textiles and fabrics in general were made from natural materials or animals, such as wool. And so also like if you look in archives of fashion houses of museums, you can see what materials things are made from and it's very easy to just find what that source is and do research on that. In terms of things like lace bark, which I mentioned, which is a little bit more under researched, there are tons of blogs. Like if you could think of anything, you could just type it in like fabric made from this plant and there might be something happening. And I know there's a huge movement of using biomaterials for fabric and fiber. So there's now more information about people designing with moss and other types of things. Also the dyes themselves are all like natural dyes, especially like one like henna or like turmeric and also obviously indigo and all of the dyes that go into making mudcloth are really interesting as well. And also like kutch and like different types of like barks that are used all over Africa to get really interesting colors. One of the things about like while I was doing some research and I was talking to a very close friend of mine that works in the fashion industry more specifically concentrating on heritage textiles is that we're actually facing a situation where the production of heritage textile in Africa isn't necessarily meeting the demand around the world especially with like organizations like or like companies like Reservation Hardware and so on that you could walk through Williamsburg, you will see a plethora of these sort of stores that have these textiles. They're actually now starting to be produced in China and in especially sort of cuba cloths and certain cuba cloths and certain things. So it's definitely something that you need to look out for in terms of like who you trust. And sometimes they just sort of like ship it to Mali and sell it from someone in Mali to make it come across as it being authentic. And whenever you do buy these sort of like textiles to make sure that you're getting sometimes they artificially wear the textile like wear it out. And so when you buy some of these textiles to make sure that especially with indigo dyed cloth that the indigo still kind of comes off onto your fingers like, you know, when you buy new jeans or whatever those artificially faded ones are most likely something that has been produced incorrectly and likely been produced in China. Which is worrying because it is an African heritage textile and it is, well, you know a lot of my project deals with like the appropriation of a process. It does work differently when now sort of you're capitalizing on like a trend especially an interior design trend where it's like modernist but rough and ready. I think the other thing about capitalizing on a process is that it naturally devalues the process because it has to be mass produced and what makes these sustainable is that they are small batch that there are not hundreds being produced or thousands being produced on an assembly line. It's the care, the craftsmanship. So I think part of that is also lost in the mass production and this consumption culture like everyone wants a hundred of these. So anyways, it was amazing hearing your presentation. I look forward to following your work. Thank you so much for joining this panel. Thank you to Cooper Hewitt for having us. And I know there was part two of the symposium coming up in the fall. So make sure you stay tuned for that. Thank you for joining us today and have a good afternoon. Thank you so much.