COLORSxSTUDIOS

“I always sign the work I do by myself with my name N-I-K-E and I encourage the other women to sign their work too,” says Chief Dr Nike Davies-Okundaye. She’s wearing “Adire Alabela”, a material designed using a wax-resist technique called batik to produce intricate patterns on differently hued fabrics, with a particular focus on the color indigo. At first glance, it’s easier to view the fabric as merely a fashion piece, but it’s more than that. “I call it wearable art,” Davies-Okundaye adds. This art has become a symbol of the enduring heritage of the Yoruba people of Southwestern Nigeria from whom the fabric emanates. For Davies-Okundaye, as well as the many Nigerian women she has worked with throughout her five-decade-long career, it also denotes empowerment, ownership, and liberation.

Nike Davies-Okundaye, affectionately known as Mama Nike, is one of the most renowned pillars of African arts and culture. Having produced endless innovative designs and accrued a vast knowledge over her five-decade-long career as a Batik and Adire artist, she has showcased her work in over 100 international exhibitions, led lectures and workshops at Ivy League Universities, sat on the Nigerian Tourism Board, and won awards including the Ordine Della Stella Della Solidarietà Italiana—one of the highest national honors in Italy. Most importantly, Davies-Okundaye, through her work with Adire, acts as a beacon of courage and hope for African artists and women. Looking back at her career, the artist notes, “we have used textiles to change so much.”

Indigo is regarded as the color of love by the Yoruba people. “The pattern of Adire is the way we used to communicate in the past,” Davies-Okundaye explains. “While water patterns tell you ‘I’m not your enemy, I’m your friend,’ the image of a gecko says ‘find me a room in your house and in your heart.’ It is used by lovers.” While romantic at times, the love of community and the environment are two of the most important elements of Adire. “You have to wear your indigo to show your people that you love them,” adds Davies-Okundaye. It is this love that has informed her service to her community, and her dedication to empowering women of little means through education in this age-old craft. “Now, they have their own voice because their work is their voice. There are over 4000 women whose lives have changed thanks to textiles,” she says. In many ways, Davies-Okundaye is one such woman.

Born in 1951 in Ogidi-Ijumu, a small village in Kogi State, Davies-Okundaye first encountered the process of Adire-making through her great-grandmother at the age of six. “By the time I was ten-years-old, I was already weaving on a proper loom and considered a professional,” she reminisces. Having come from a poor background, money earned from creating textiles and working menial jobs became a way for her to afford her school tuition fees. “I’d work and save until I had about fifteen shillings,” she says. As was the practice at the time, Davies-Okundaye was married off at the age of fourteen to the then-famous musician and painter, Twin Seven Seven. Before finding the courage to divorce him fifteen years later, she taught her skills to her fellow wives as a means of survival. “There were fifteen of us married to one man,” she explains. “We always fought with each other because there was a shortage of food and water. But then I showed them that we could work with our hands to take care of ourselves.”