An Incomplete Taxonomy of Amazigh Symbols

This poster is the result of a year of collaboration and collective research with weavers from the Anou undertaken to document Amazigh weavers' stories and visual language.

The resulting taxonomy documents over 100 Amazigh weaving symbols and the meanings the weavers themselves recorded — among them the symbol of Tanit, the ancient North African goddess associated with the feminine divine and the symbol of snsla (the chain), linked diamonds that symbolize the strength and bonding of a tribe. 

These symbols hold feminist narratives  by definition — created, held, and transmitted by women — and yet they have long been appropriated and theorized out of context, stripped of the weavers' own voices and meanings. Positioning these symbols within design history reframes weaving as an authored visual system passed through practice and testimony. 

The research culminated in the essay "Woven in Oral History" in the book Centered, edited by Kaleena Sales (Princeton Architectural Press, 2023), and the poster was exhibited in Reverberations: Lineages in Design History at the Ford Foundation Gallery in 2025. Functioning as a responsive, adaptive space open to experimentation, contemplation, and conversation, the gallery — through Reverberations — became an expansive educational space reimagining what counts as design history.