Obroni Wawu: How Artists from Ghana are Reinventing Global Textile Waste
Lecture by Odile Tevie, GHA

Textile Centre Haslach
Tuesday, 28 July, 7:00 PM

Every week, huge quantities of used clothing pour into the Kantamanto Market in Accra, Ghana – known locally as Obroni Wawu or „dead white man's clothes“. A large proportion of this ends up in landfill sites, in sewers and in the sea. Odile Tevie's lecture highlighted how Ghanaian artists – including Michael Gah, Frederick Bamfo, Fatric Bewong, Emmanuel Aggrey Tieku, Oldy Blaq and Jeffery Baidoo – transform this discarded textile waste into expressive works of art. Their artistic practice raises urgent questions about value, global consumption and shared responsibility, and makes visible a crisis that the West largely ignores.

ODILE TEVIE is co-founder and Director of the Nubuke Foundation, an award-winning Ghanaian institution for contemporary art and culture based in Accra and Wa, established in 2006. Previously, she worked at London's Black Swan Gallery and has championed West African artists internationally. She is now developing the Nubuke Foundation into a hub for artistic development, cultural preservation, and community engagement.