Diama Ndati
Thiam

§ About

I am a Senegalese-born artist. My practice moves between textile, paint, photography, and beadwork. Trained first as a biochemist, I brought the precision of laboratory work to the craft of making: dyeing, sewing, embroidery, crochet, beadwork. Materials became my language before they became my livelihood.

I have spent years travelling across West Africa to meet the hands behind the cloth: Bogolan dyers in Mali, Aso Oke weavers in Nigeria, Tapa makers in Côte d'Ivoire, cotton spinners in Senegal. These journeys are not sourcing trips. They are the work itself: sitting with the women who weave, learning the gestures, understanding why a colour holds its shade for a century.

In 2023 I founded NDATI, a creative luxury house where my textile research takes the form of bags, belts, kimonos, and the cloth around them. The house is based between Dakar and Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I now live. Each piece bears the name of a woman from African history: Taytu Betul, Ndate Yalla, Asantewaa, Sitoe. Names that resisted erasure.

My work has been carried in private collections across Europe and North America, and in 2026 entered the wearable art programme of Somerville Open Studios.