Cloth that speaks: African women's visual voice and creative expression in Ghana (West Africa)

This dissertation study, Cloth That Speaks, explores and analyses the meanings of Dutch wax prints for women in Ghana, West Africa. Wax prints are colorful, message-bearing cloths, worn by women throughout West Africa and particularly in Ghana. They are factory produced cotton cloths based on the Javanese batik resist design and printing method. Since the nineteenth century, European textile companies have produced a select variety of waxprints intended for sale in West Africa. In present day Ghana, it is factory-made cloths from Holland---Dutch waxprints---that have the greatest prestige and form an integral part of the lives of women. The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the transformation and recontextualization of waxprints from an import into valuable and meaningful local expressive art.;I approached this study by tracing the origin and development of waxprints from their early stages in Java through the phases of production in Holland and their distribution and consumption in Ghana. This field study adopted an open-ended, inductive, qualitative research approach, combining observation with interviews and oral narratives, to capture the social relations and individual activities that reflect the meaning of waxprints to the women selected for this study. I collected stories from women, expressing what waxprints meant to them. In this way, the project takes a woman-centered approach, giving expression to women's personal visions and experiences on their own terms. The result is a qualitative account of Ghanaian women's definitions, construction, and perspectives of their lives.;Through my discussions and observations, I found that waxprints were more than coverings for the body; they are part of strategies that women use to navigate their lives. Thus, I consider waxprints as instruments of power within women's social spheres. My study presents African women who are making meaning locally, and contributing to the global flow of goods. They are not only consuming textiles, but they are using their social and cultural values to construct their identity as women. In this way, they are constructing agency in a manner that is often overlooked.