This exhibit features the quilt “Midnight Sky,” created by Adesola Kilani Falade in 1997 in Osogbo, Nigeria. Falade is an artist of the Nike Center for Art and Culture. The Center was established in 1988 in Osogbo, Nigeria by Oyenike “Nike” Davies-Okundaye to help students build skills to earn a living through art.

“Midnight Sky” is made of a traditional Yoruba cloth known as adire. The Yoruba people are a large ethnic group in Nigeria and Benin (West Africa). Adire is created by using resist dye techniques (similar to tie-dye) to create dramatic blue on blue patterns. Artists fold, tie, and stitch the cloth with raffia or cotton thread, or paint dye resistant starch onto the cloth before dipping it into the blue dye. This allows some areas of the cloth not to receive dye and to remain white.

Indigo dye creates the blue color of the “Midnight Sky” quilt. Through this exhibit learn about the techniques for creating an adire quilt, the global reach of indigo, and how the “Midnight Sky” quilt connects many parts of the world.