All materials for the course will be provided. All one need bring is an open mind, and willingness to try new things in a beautiful place, amongst like-minded friends.

ACTIVITY

In this three-day immersive indigo workshop, Aboubakar Fofana guides participants through the unique chemistry of establishing a fructose vat with powdered indigo. Emphasizing environmentally responsible techniques, he demonstrates how careful preparation and sustained attentiveness yield a rich, living vat ready for dyeing. Participants will gain both practical knowledge and a deeper understanding of this ancient and singular dye.

Working collectively, and in consultation with Aboubakar’s recipe book—a culmination of a life of blue hands—participants will build a forty-gallon indigo vat and have access to three additional vats. These living systems open a wide range of tonal possibilities, from the lightest hues to the deepest blues. With guided support, students will create a series of dyed samples, focusing on the fundamentals of dipping and the development of nuanced gradations of color.

Aboubakar Fofana’s approach to teaching mirrors his approach to artmaking: grounded in deep listening and guided by a generous spirit. His colorwork is rooted in a cosmology of twelve shades of blue—not simply variations in tone, but reflections of distinct states of being and understanding within a spiritual world. With decades devoted to the cultivation, growth, and preparation of indigo, his relationship to the material is profound. To learn with him is a rare and meaningful experience, sure to be both enriching and inspiring.

LOCATION

This workshop will take place in the Pratt Institute Dye Garden in Brooklyn, NY.

The Dye Garden is located on the Brooklyn Campus of the Pratt Institute. The garden offers workshops to Pratt Institute and the surrounding community educating on the sustainable and integrative process of natural dyes.

Recognizing the Indigenous knowledge these dyes are based on is central to the garden’s identity, as is an acknowledgement that the garden is built on Lenapehoking territory.

You can read more about the dye garden project here: https://textiledyegarden.pratt.edu/.

Dates
June 19th -21st, 2026

Cost
$895

Our Teacher

Born in Mali and raised in France, Aboubakar Fofana is a multidisciplinary artist and designer whose working mediums include calligraphy, textiles and natural dyes. He is known for his work in reinvigorating and redefining West African indigo dyeing techniques, and much of his focus is devoted to the preservation and reinterpretation of traditional West African textile and natural dyeing techniques and materials.

Fofana’s work stems from a profound spiritual belief that nature is divine and that through respecting this divinity we can understand the immense and sacred universe. His raw materials come from the natural world, and his working practice revolves around the cycles of nature, the themes of birth, decay and change, and the impermanence of these materials. He sees the conception and realisation of this work as a form of spiritual practice which is shared with his audience.

Fofana is currently deeply involved in creating a farm in conjunction with the local community in the district of Siby, Mali, in which the two types of indigenous West African indigo will be the centerpiece for a permaculture model based around local food, medicine and dye plants. This project hopes to contribute to the rebirth of fermented indigo dyeing in Mali and beyond, and represents his life’s greatest project to date.

Photographs by Francois Goudier, Katherine Hattori, and Ash Ngu