Sirigu Symbols: Traditional Communicative Images For Fashion Designedprints

Traditional textiles can be appreciated for their realistic and abstract communicative qualities, as other art forms are understood to express. This paper aims at utilizing the communicative abilities of culturally imbedded motifs found in Sirigu mural paintings to produce a culturally symbolic textile. Culture is expressed in textiles through colour, motif and words and Sirigu motifs are no exception. The study seeks to establish the fact that Sirigu symbols (normally seen as a mural wall painting in northern Ghana) can be transferred onto fabrics capable of meeting the contemporary concepts of textile design print. The study employed both the descriptive and experimental methods to produce screen design prints as a means of communicating and popularizing this northern Ghana symbolic concept in the Ghanaian market. It explored the use of cellulosic material (mercerized cotton) and printing inks to produce fashionableclothing’s. The result of the study indicates that Sirigu symbols can be transferred onto fabrics to be used as a “language of metaphor,” and also as a cultural aesthetic art piece capable of competing favourably with other metaphoric fabrics. The concept could be explored further to inspire and educate producers as well as students to increase innovation. Discussions were based on theoretical, academic, historical, cultural, philosophical and artistic contexts. The textile produced showed ingenuity, inventiveness, diversity, contrast, harmony, multiplicity, stability as well as capturing the communicative dynamics inherent in metaphoric fabric design print.