Charting the origins and significance of the use of two types of specifically colored cloth in west central Africa, this talk investigates visual, material, and social change in that region during the era of the slave trade. White uniforms worn by Christian church leaders and blue and white imported textiles, it argues, are two key examples that reveal how the inhabitants of the closely related regions of Kongo, Angola, and Loango welcomed and managed the novelties their sustained cross-cultural relations with Europeans and engagement in the slave trade ushered between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century. It reveals profound links between religion, power, and the slave trade and their bearing on central Africa from the early modern period to the eve of the colonial era.

Cécile Fromont is the American Academy in Rome Post-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies and associate professor of art history at the University of Chicago.

The event will be held in English. You can watch it live at https://livestream.com/aarome.