Back to square one:
when our fashion waste comes back to us
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Research and Data Visualization
NOVEMBER 2023
What if the textile remnants from Accra, a city in Ghana where the West dumps 15 million used or even unused garments every week, weren’t hidden away but deposited in our squares and streets?
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This staggering amount of waste is not just an abstract number—it’s a physical invasion. In New York, it would consume the entirety of Washington Square; in Paris, it would occupy a substantial portion of the Champs-Élysées; and in Milan, it would completely cover Piazza Duomo. And it's no coincidence that these cities are the world's three fashion capitals.
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The artwork serves as a strong and provocative reminder of the textile waste crisis, exposing the imbalance between those who create the waste and those forced to manage it.
In this installation, city maps of New York, Paris, and Milan are printed on three canvases made from recycled cotton. On these canvases, three different patchworks of fabric scraps illustrate the surface area that would be occupied by textile waste if packed into bales of 200 garments each, each measuring 70x50cm.
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The installation blends physical and digital elements: the textile maps make the scale of the crisis visible, while the AI-generated images imagine a future where these mountains of waste are no longer hidden, but take over our cities.
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The artwork was exhibited at the Info+ 2023 in the Inspace venue in Edinburgh.
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