Artist Print Series 021 - Addoley Dzegede

The 21st in our Artist Print Series. 

Addoley Dzegede is a Ghanaian-American artist based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her primary focus is questioning commonly held ideas about authenticity and belonging. She creates textile works in vibrant colors using screen printing, dyeing, and batik processes. She has primarily worked with textiles as a means of bridging seemingly distinct cultural traditions and practices.  She has found that a deeper look into textile histories reveals intertwined histories involving trade, mimicry, exploitation, and transitions from handmade processes to industrialized ones. For example, recent works use the language of wax print fabrics, originating in 19th-century attempts by Dutch manufacturers to imitate and mass-produce handmade Indonesian batiks. Inspired by color, cloth, and pattern as a means for conveying nuanced messages, Addoley examines the historical connections and entanglements lurking behind these and other seemingly innocuous decorative artifacts that have shaped our contemporary world. 

For this print series, Addoley used the wax-resist technique batik to dye the background cloth of each print before Flash Flood printed a halftone image of various wax print fabrics from Addoley's collection. Here, wax prints made in the Netherlands, Ghana, and China, but all found in Makola Market in Accra, Ghana, sit side by side. Addoley has been selected for an upcoming Fulbright to the Netherlands for the 2022-2023 year. View more of Addoley's work here.

11x14”
Four color screen print on fabric hand-dyed by the artist using a wax-resist technique, backed with French Construction Pure White 100#C
signed and editioned by the artist on the reverse

Due to the nature of the process of batik, the dyed crackle effect will vary from print to print. The texture on the print you receive may differ from the one shown here.