By Amrut Mishra

In this lightning talk, Amrut Mishra explores Wax batik dying and how the artist Yinka Shonibare incorporates these clothes to stage the history of colonialism. Wax batik dying—sometimes attributed as Indonesian, Dutch, or West African batik dying—traces the routes of eighteenth and nineteenth century colonial trade. Shonibare employs this fabric across his ouvre—across the various scenes of dandyism, aristocratic leisure, colonial conquest, and Enlightenment discovery. Asking what it means that our senses of sight, taste, smell, and touch are imbricated in empire, Mishra looks to Shonibare’s artistic practice as a means of calibrating different sensibilities.