Many young ethnic people such as myself have had phases in our lives when we didn’t understand or accept certain facets in our culture. We have grown up in worlds and societies that shame us for our practices, our foods and our accents causing many of us to hide valuable parts of ourselves. Consequently, I wanted to create something that would give young culturally diverse people the opportunity to re marry the parts of themselves that have been hidden away. This is why I decided to focus my project on trying to re accept your culture by re contextualizing the practices in a way that is significant and personal to you. I used the practice of tattooing as vessel to explore this concept by trying to understand the traditional methods of tattooing done by Polynesian tribes. The pieces I have designed take inspiration from a traditional type of dressing worn by people of the Yoruba tribe from Nigeria; Iro and Buba. I feel that the pieces have fulfilled my intentions by giving me a deeper connection with my culture in a way that I can understand as a modern African woman with a blended Nigerian and British culture.
Using techniques such as embroidery, were very relevant to the physical process of tattooing and ideas of storytelling in Ankara . Learning embroidery allowed me to go on a material journey, in the sense that as my project grew, my embroidery skills did, and I think that this is incredibly authentic to the theme of my project.