Bogolanfini 'cloth made with mud' is a textile created primarily by the Bamana people of Mali in West Africa. The Bamana are the largest ethnic group in Mali, and live in the central part of the country. Made of locally woven narrow strips of white cotton sewn together, bogolanfini is covered with geometric designs that depict legends, historical events, heroes, morality tales, life situations and physical elements and animals in the Bamana world. Within a traditional context bogolanfini cloths are made by women and the art passed down from one generation to another. Bamana women wear bogolanfini fabrics as wraparound skirts (tafe) at rites de passage - periods of major social transition - such as marriage, giving birth, excision (female circumcision) and death. Men wear bogolanfini shirts, especially hunters. They believe that the bogolanfini designs protect them from the spirits of the animals they kill. Creating bogolanfini in the traditional technique is a time-consuming process. The white cotton cloth must first be treated with a yellow- colored mordant to ensure that the mud dye adheres to the cloth. Using bamboo sticks and a metal stylus, the artist traces out the major sections of a cloth and then paints in the backgrounds, leaving the designs in the yellow of the mordant. The yellow designs are later bleached, using caustic soda applied with the end of a stick. Sometimes an artist applies two or more coats of mud dye to achieve the right depth of black. The exhibition presents thirty five fabrics made by a leading bogolanfini artist Gneli Traoré of Mali, her children and her students. The fabrics include wrap-around skirts, shirts, trousers and large wall hangings, Traoré's art was first described in 1970 by Dr. Pascal James Imperato in an article in African Arts Magazine. The exhibition and the fully- illustrated catalogue by Dr. Imperato reflect the changes that occurred in Gneli Traoré's bogolanfini tradition over time. Some of these changes have been brought about by a modern derivative cloth known as bogolan that resembles bogolanfini but is produced by a much less demanding process and uses free hand or stenciled designs. Bogolan is now widely produced in Mali for the fashion industry.