Born in Mali in 1967, Aboubakar Fofana left for Paris at a young age. Initially drawn to calligraphy, he explored Western and Eastern traditions before discovering Africa’s rich history of written scripts. His first major installation countered the notion that African societies were purely oral traditions, marking his spiritual reconnection with Africa.

A childhood memory of a plant with green leaves that stained fingers blue led him to search for traditional indigo dyeing methods in West Africa. However, the craft had vanished, replaced by chemical dyes. Piecing together fragments of knowledge from libraries and his travels, he revived the lost art of fermented indigo vats.

For Fofana, nature is divine. His living indigo vats, free of chemicals, rely on bacteria to transform leaves into dye. His work defends these techniques and philosophies, believing that the natural world—and human ability—holds the key to both our origins and our future.