Complex Geometries: Creativity, Motif, and the Study of Contemporary Handwoven Cloth from Côte d'Ivoire

It began with a business partnership and grew to a research collaboration. In 2014 I met a group of weavers in the village of Waraniéné, Côte d'Ivoire (Fig. 1). Vali Coulibaly, one of the master weavers and president of the village workshop, shared their interest in collaborating with someone who could help market cloth woven at Waraniéné to Global North consumers. Six master craftspeople, an American designer, an Ivorian operations manager, and myself founded a partnership in 2016 as a mechanism for weavers to sell their strip-woven textiles directly to global consumers.¹ In 2020, we officially registered the partnership as a nonprofit organization, with the goal of investing all profits in arts-based initiatives ideated and managed by the craftspeople at Waraniéné.² My role began as a business partner and transitioned, through my developing relationships as well as academic study, toward a scholarly interest in the creativity...