Bark Cloth, the first man-made textile, is believed first to be used on the African continent, though its exact origins are lost to history. Bark Cloth was (and still is) made by peeling the inner bark off trees, and beating it until it was soft. Arte now succeeded in making a wallpaper out of this ancient fabric. The campaign images we made were inspired by the mysterious black monolith that appears in Stanley Kubrick’s '2001: A Space Odyssey'. This monolith’s origin is a mystery just like the Bark Cloth.

The Bark Cloth used in this wallcovering is cultivated from Mutuba trees (Ficus natalensis) on eco-certified farms in Uganda. For its incomparable expression, in 2005 Bark Cloth was declared to be a masterpiece of intangible, cultural heritage by UNESCO.