Re-(t)exHile exposes textile dumping in Nigeria through okrika, transforming waste into ecological critique and social testimony

Re-(t)exHile, presented at the 4th Lagos Biennial with DSA Lagos, articulates textile waste as an urgent theatre of ecological injustice, where second-hand garments become evidence of unequal global consumption rather than benign charity. Conceived by four international artists in collaboration with designer Adebola Badmus, the pavilion transformed colourful okirika into a stitched marquee, converting discarded clothing into an immersive architectural indictment. Its conceptual force lies in exposing how Western overproduction migrates materially into Nigerian markets, landscapes and communities, producing both environmental burden and cultural distortion. Maria Alejandra Gatti’s long-term exploration of refuge and textiles, Martinka Bobrikova’s emphasis on Nigerian urgency, and Oscar de Carmen’s critique of Western consumerism converge in a case study of waste colonialism: the garment, once intimate, becomes geopolitical residue. The work’s significance therefore exceeds aesthetic spectacle; it stages a public pedagogy in which visitors confront the hidden afterlife of fashion. Ultimately, Re-(t)exHile insists that Nigeria is not a receptacle for excess, but a site from which new ethical vocabularies of production, disposal and planetary responsibility must be articulated. Oladimeji, D. (2024) ‘Artists illuminate environmental implications of textile waste at the refuge’, The Guardian Nigeria, 25 February. Available at: https://guardian.ng/art/artists-illuminate-environmental-implications-of-textile-waste-at-the-refuge/ (Accessed: 26 April 2026).

Re-(t)exHile * Waste and Repair

 

Re-(t)exHile is an ongoing socioplastic project, initiated at the 4th Lagos Art and Architecture Biennial, where discarded textiles become living documents of exile, resilience, and postcolonial repair. Installed in Tafawa Balewa Square, a former colonial racetrack turned civic site, the work gathers secondhand cloth from European and African markets to compose ephemeral architectures: woven tents, suspended threads, fragmented archives. The result is a hybrid installation where migration, economy, and affection entangle within a fragile spatial system. Curated by Folakunle Oshun and Kathryn Weir, and developed in collaboration with Martinka Bobrikova, Óscar De Carmen, Adebola Badmus, María Alejandra Gatti, and Lloveras, the work explores how socioplastics can activate textile waste as historical witness. Threads are not simply sewn—they are situational fixers, stitched into place with stories, photos, and field research. Cloth becomes critical interface, recording the emotional and political entanglements of global circulation. Beyond Lagos, Re-(t)exHile extends the conceptual lineage of El Dorado, Blue Bags, and Mudas—projects where fragility and movement reconfigure how we understand form. As part of United Nations of Art, it proposes a borderless infrastructure of textile memory, where materials migrate like people: worn, displaced, adapted. Every scrap tells a story. Every fold is a map of care. (Lloveras, A. 2010–2025) - antolloveras.blogspot.com - re-(t)exHile, textile installation, socioplastics, exile, global waste, living document, lagos biennial, symbolic repair, postcolonial textile, unstable architecture, united nations of art, affective archive, situational fixer

Re-(t)exHile * Site Specific Tension

 

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.

 

Re-(t)exHile – Refuge 2024, presented at the IV Lagos Biennial of Art and Architecture, was an intersection of ephemeral architecture, urban memory, and material circulation that converges into a powerful spatial critique. Conceived by a transdisciplinary team of artists, architects, and cultural practitioners including Lloveras, Bobrikova, Carmen, Gatti and Badmus. 

Re-(t)exHile ::: IV Lagos Art and Architecture Biennial 2024 :::: Refuge

The video succinctly captures the essence of Re-(t)exHile, with purchase of five hundred pieces of second-hand clothing at Katangua Market, the assembly of the immense sewn fabric as a textile pavilion, all secured with three tensioned cables, and the subsequent participatory workshop, always surrounded by other pavilions and performances during Biennial week. A watercolor-like visual summary, with background music as a timeless fixative.

FILMED AND EDITED BY LLOVERAS

Re-(t)exHile :::::::::: IV Lagos Art and Architecture Biennial ::::::::::: 2024 ************* Tafawa Balewa Square __________ Photos by Mide King

The Re-(t)exHile project is a research endeavor that contemplates the notion of the body as an inhabited territory. A symbolic space reflecting struggles, resistance, and social, political, and economic inheritances. This arena of contention also serves as a refuge, a minimal space for transformation and care. The project advances by investigating concepts like identity and border through a flag inscribed with the word "outsider." The piece, never fixed in one location, traverses and alters its function, ranging from refuge to blanket, wrap, and occasionally acting as a roof—signifying the randomness of its boundaries.

In the 4th edition of the Lagos Biennale, themed "Refuge," the project delves into the issue of textile waste traveling from the Global North to the Global South disguised as second-hand clothing. Through an installation in airspace, a minimal refuge is created using almost 500 second-hand textile materials purchased at the Katangwa market in Lagos. Through a collective sewing action conducted by the team and local collaborators, the shape of the refuge evolves during the biennial. The project aims to make visible exploitative patterns shaped by the colonial legacy embedded in the secondhand trade and advocates for sustainable fashion practices.

Art as refuge: A glance at the 4th Lagos Biennial http://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2024/02/art-as-refuge-glance-at-4th-lagos.html Artist illuminate environmental implications of textile waste as refuge https://guardian.ng/art/artists-illuminate-environmental-implications-of-textile-waste-at-the-refuge/ - re-(t)exHile http://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-pavilion-to-be-showcased-at-4th-art.html ++ http://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2024/01/lagos-biennial-2024-3-to-10-february.html Research trip http://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2022/09/lagos-nigeria-september-2022-biennial.html +++++ http://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2023/09/iv-bienal-de-arte-y-arquitectura-lagos.html REFUGE 2024 https://lagos-biennial.org - https://lagos-biennial.org CURATED BY FOLAKUNLE OSHUN 

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The project is spearheaded by Maria Alejandra Gatti, Martinka Bobrikova, Oscar de Carmen, and Anto Lloveras. In Lagos, Adebola Badmus, the Creative Director of DSA LAGOS, and her team joined the project. The project is supported by public funding from Acción Cultural Española AC/E (PICE) - OCA- Office Contemporary Art Norway, and the Slovak Arts Council.