The textile canopy, suspended between monumental equestrian sculptures and industrial concrete, embodies both shelter and rupture, generating a space of contingent collectivity amidst urban residues. Central to the project is the reuse of second-hand textiles, sourced from Katangua Market, one of Africa’s largest hubs for the circulation of discarded garments from the Global North. Purchased in bulk bags from the lowest-priced section, the fabrics—subjected to resistance testing—bear the wear of global consumption and the imprint of economic asymmetries. Their transformation into a resilient canopy challenges normative notions of material obsolescence, embedding within the structure a tangible critique of circular economies. While discourses around sustainability often celebrate reuse, Re-(t)exHile underscores the paradoxical violence of material dumping, where “recycling” veils extractive trade practices. The project aligns with Ibrahim Mahama’s jute installations and El Anatsui’s reconstituted bottle-top tapestries, yet departs in its deliberate impermanence, crafting a temporal occupation that resists commodification. The red line becomes a symbol of marginality, invisibilized yet persistent, evoking questions of exclusion, mobility, and visibility in urban and artistic domains. Its in-betweenness redefines the installation as a space of latency, where meaning flickers between presence and absence, structure and cloth, power and fragility. Set against the monumental backdrop of Tafawa Balewa Square’s equestrian figures and rigid architectural geometries, Re-(t)exHile intervenes with softness, adaptability, and symbolic tension.
The tensile structure, suspended by three stainless steel cables and securely anchored to the concrete ground, creates spatial dynamism through subtle shifts in height, movement, and light. This ephemeral spatiality contrasts with the square’s permanence and symmetry, recalling Gordon Matta-Clark’s acts of architectural incision, and Do Ho Suh’s fabric architectures that transpose domesticity into public space. As with the 2016 Venice Biennale’s “Reporting from the Front”, which emphasized architecture as social action, this work challenges the authoritative monumentality of the plaza, transforming it into a contested zone of dialogue and occupation. The project’s transdisciplinary approach—merging architectural design, textile knowledge, and performance—reflects a collaborative ethos resonant with the Sharjah Biennial’s emphasis on artistic networks and spatial justice. Beyond its physical form, Re-(t)exHile operates as a platform for collaborative acts, a refuge not only from environmental elements but from dominant narratives of space and belonging. The act of constructing together becomes a political gesture, emphasizing process over product, relation over object. In Re-(t)exHile, the ephemeral canopy is more than an architectural intervention; it is a spatial manifesto against exclusion, waste, and fixity. By embedding hidden messages, engaging with precarious materials, and occupying a charged urban site, the work enacts a critique of global material flows while crafting a space of temporary resistance and care. It challenges us to rethink what architecture can do—to shelter, to question, to reveal—and how artistic interventions might disrupt and reimagine the narratives inscribed in public space.
