Stitching and Printing Ghana’s Past: Exploring Historical Narratives through Textile Design

Abstract

This study examines how embroidery, appliqué, and textile printing can serve as visual storytelling techniques for representing and preserving aspects of Ghana’s history. It is guided by the question of how these techniques, used separately and in combination, can be read and evaluated for their capacity to communicate historical meaning and cultural representation, and it pursues this question through Visual Culture Theory, Cultural Memory Theory, and Arts-Based Research as interpretive frameworks. Although Ghana’s historical experiences and cultural heritage are conventionally transmitted through oral tradition and written record, this study explores textile art as an additional medium for translating historical narrative into visual and tactile form. Adopting a practice-based qualitative design, the researcher produced three textile artworks addressing the Akwaaba symbol of hospitality, the transatlantic slave trade at Cape Coast Castle, and Ghana’s struggle for independence, using embroidery, appliqué, and screen-printing techniques on cotton fabric. The creative process was documented through sketches, photographs, and reflective notes, and the completed works were evaluated against explicit criteria of symbolic legibility, compositional coherence, and cultural and emotional resonance to determine their effectiveness as historical narrative. The findings indicate that embroidery contributes texture, intimacy, and emotional depth to historical representation, while printing supports broader compositional and symbolic narrative. Together, the two techniques produce textile artworks that function as visual archives of collective memory. The study concludes that textile art offers a viable, under-used medium for historical education and cultural preservation in the Ghanaian context.