African wax prints are cotton fabrics with batik patterns that are used to make clothing, particularly in West Africa and the African diaspora. (Wikipedia) Everyone knows the colored cotton fabrics, but hardly anyone knows their colonial history, in which Switzerland also played a vital role in the spreading of these fabrics in West Africa. In the mid-19th century, a Dutch company copied an Indonesian printing technique and the trading company of the Basel Mission created a market for it on the Gold Coast (in present-day Ghana).

In talks, films and installations, designers, artists and researchers from Africa and Europe shed light on colonial entanglements between Switzerland and West Africa over two centuries. WAX ENCOUNTERS is the first stage of an extensive theater and fashion project by GROUP50:50, a collective of artists from the Congo, Switzerland and Germany that realizes and produces transnational artistic cooperation projects.
 

With Edwige Dro, author and cultural activist (Abidjan), Percy Nii Nortey, visual artist (Kumasi), Kojack Kossakamvwe, guitarist and composer (Kinshasa), Maame Konaduh Mintah, lawyer and cultural activist (Accra), Austin Nortey, fashion designer (Kumasi), Eva-Maria Bertschy, director and author (Zurich), Elia Rediger, artist and musician (Basel) and many others.