THE AFRICAN-inspired designs of Donnette Cooper's quilts communicate a familiar story of reconnection felt by an international African diaspora community.

Cooper uses Ghanaian Adinkra symbols, cowrie shells and kente cloth-inspired colour configurations in her work. But Cooper's works also include personal swatches from her life, like cloth purchased during her travels, leftover material from a sister's dress and pieces of her own clothing. She relates that she can look at her quilts and often read a story from her life.

connecting back to Africa

As a young girl, Cooper was introduced to sewing by her grandmother and by watching her father work as a tailor. She started quilting in 1991 and has exhibited in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the American Craft Museum, the Corcoran Museum of Art and, most recently, at the Virginia Quilt Museum.

"As a Jamaican, I am clearly from African ancestry, but there was this separation in my timeline of connecting back to Africa, not knowing exactly where you come from in Africa. I like to travel to Africa and I am fascinated by the masks, the art and the fabric. I am particularly moved by the fabric because African textiles were not just fabric for clothing. So many messages were encoded in the textiles. I see in my art a search for a reconnection to Africa. I pull bits and pieces from my collective past and quilt an African diaspora tapestry."