Woori Festival 2022
This year’s annual celebration of the Upper West’s rich and diverse weaving traditions took place across the first weekend of March at our Centre for Textiles and Clay in Loho, near Wa.
Building on the success of last year’s maiden edition, our 2022 programme expanded the Woori festival experience with workshops, live weaving demos, community activations, music, poetry, games and more.
Our annual exhibition will remain open until the end of June.
Activating Local Talents through Digital Collaboration
This year we were particularly proud to showcase the woven textiles realised from a series of digital collaborations instigated by Nubuke between weavers in the Upper West and contemporary designers Maria Lisogorskaya from Assemble UK, Nana Opoku from House of Stole and Chrissa Amuah from AMWA Designs.
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The Exhibition
For the main exhibition, a list of intergenerational artists are showing. The oldest, born in 1957, Edward Lamptey, is a batik artist, textile designer, and painter. A selection of works included in the festival flattens the idea of masks from traditional African societies.
His works are juxtaposed with the younger artist Ransford Anane. Anane’s works experiment with standard batik dye-and-dye processes. He then transforms the fabrics from flat surfaces to various forms.
Drawing on her Islamic background, Halimatu Iddrisu uses dye, pastel, chalk, paint, lele, and henna to superimpose women figurations on hijabs, prayer mats and other textiles.
In the outdoor space, Gideon Hanyame uses collage, dyeing, stitching, and loose embroidery to transform sieves, water filters, and plant fibers into billboard-writing banner inspired sculptures.
Sculptor, painter and cloth designer Tei Huagie’s metal sculpture takes the form of a human head. He uses aluminium sheets like he would as a textile designer.
Alice Raymond realises a collaboration with strip weavers in the Greater Accra region. The work explores woven strips as a potential drawing line or a spatial trajectory.
Workshops and Live Demos
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Oroko Radio and Community Activations
We would like to say a big thank you to our friends at Oroko Radio, for helping curate the sounds of Woori 2022. The Accra-based radio station, whose aim is to amplify alternative sounds and thoughts coming from Africa and the Diaspora, collaborated with us on a number of community activations.
Oroko hosted a pop-up broadcast in Wa, creating a durational festival site beyond our centre in Loho.
The broadcast was followed by a music production workshop with youth from the School of the Blind, who we have been working closely with for the past decade.
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Sunset Show
Our Sunset Show featuring performances by local musicians and creatives closed with a fashion show exhibiting clothes by STEPHAPP Ghana, Karim Mahama and Shaft Designs. Their collections paid homage to the Upper West’s unique strip weaving traditions and dress aesthetics.
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