Ghana: Turning clothes waste into artworks

Youngsters taking part in with toy vehicles or girls singing. The artworks on Michael’s canvas had been as soon as clothes, shirts or skirts. The younger man has expertly minimize the colorful materials.

With style off-cuts from tailoring outlets or second-hand markets, the younger modern artist based mostly in Accra, has made his latest textile artwork piece.

“This material [Editor’s note: pointing at a large piece of five men wearing matching trousers]; I sourced them from Kantamanto after which this one is from a buddy that sews, and this piece is from Woodin.”

Utilizing textile waste isn’t just about discovering low-cost supplies – Gah additionally has environmental causes:

“Trend sense is rising quicker these days, so they have a tendency to go away the previous style down, so I’m going for them to create my artworks. I do not need them to finish up within the seas, within the gutters, to choke them.”

Gha’s ecological mindset has impressed others. Franklin Maduka Izechukwu, one in all his suppliers, was intrigued when Gha first approached him.

“After they come for [textile waste], we do not know what they use it to do, it might be that it causes a number of environmental harm, proper?”, the CEO of Fenz Trend Restricted, a style design store in Accra confesses.

When “[Gah] comes for it, he makes use of them to make arts, to make items, which is definitely good and contributing lots to our surroundings, which may be very key, and I feel it has additionally opened up my thoughts to a brand new line of enterprise to be extra environmentally acutely aware, as a result of we’ve got to be eco-friendly.”

One in every of West Africa’s hub for second-hand clothes is Accra. Kantamanto market receives objects of clothes from Western nations. Nevertheless, Ghana struggles to take care of textile waste.

Based on environmental specialists the nation has an issue.

“Each week, two million (objects of) second-hand clothes are imported,” Yaw Akwaa Lartey, an environmental well being researcher particulars. “Investigations revealed that 40 % of these things flip into waste and are dumped on the landfill websites and different crude or unauthorized refuse dumps throughout the nation.”

Michael Gah collects a number of massive luggage of textiles every week.

His works have been exhibited and bought in each native and overseas markets; as works to show the tide on Ghana’s textile waste.