Resist: Tie Dye Practice from Around the World
Resist dyeing refers to various techniques for preventing dye from permeating certain areas of a textile to create a pattern. In the wax resist method, liquid wax or a starchy paste is applied freehand, or with stamps or stencils, to the textile surface. In the shaped resist method, the cloth is manipulated through folding, tying, twisting, and binding. This exhibition celebrates the many types of shaped resist that have been practiced for thousands of years across the world.
Shaped resist dyeing is a magical process. Complex patterns emerge after the dyeing has occurred and the cloth is opened. Scholar and textile artist Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada has referred to shaped resist as “memories on cloth” because the patterns reflect the artisan’s hands and movements.1 Since no two artisans fold or bind in the same way, every resist-dyed cloth is unique.
Wada and other scholars suggest two potential theories for the development and spread of resist dyeing across the world. First, practices of resist dyeing may have developed spontaneously and independently in separate regions, including India, China, and Peru. Alternatively, resist-dyed textiles and the knowledge to produce them may have spread through migration and trade networks, such as the Silk Roads connecting China through Eurasia to the Mediterranean. Regardless of its genesis and development, resist dyeing occupies an important place in the textile traditions of numerous cultures around the world. As such, the ties and folds of the resist process can be thought of as “the ties that bind” cultures across time and place.
This exhibition is not intended as a comprehensive overview of resist dyeing. Rather, it spotlights eight regional practices that are represented in the collection of the Avenir Museum of Design and Merchandising. Where possible, text for individual regions draws attention to the connections between regional practices. As you move through the exhibition, you are encouraged to look for similarities and connections between different textile objects.
[1] See Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, Memories on Cloth: Shibori Now (New York: Kodansha USA, 2002).
