re-(t)exHile is a territorial research device that investigates the ecocides caused by textile waste on a global scale. In this context, we conceived an artistic project for the 2024 Lagos Biennial (Nigeria), specifically addressing the consequences of fast fashion, overproduction, and the massive export of second-hand clothing from the Global North to the Global South.
It was there that we designed and produced a large-scale textile installation made from over 500 used garments collected at Katangua Market in Lagos. These were assembled with the participation of local collaborators — an action that transformed the work itself into a refuge during the days of the biennial. Within this framework, we also built connections that allowed us to learn and reflect through the experiences of artists, activists, textile workers, and everyone who joined in the collective making of the piece.
After Lagos, the project continued its trajectory by focusing on the responsibility of dominant narratives about sustainability and repair that commonly proliferate in the Global North. Symbolically, the textiles — now transformed into a large installation — returned northward. The piece exhibited at the Jan Koniarek Gallery in Trnava (Slovakia) thus disrupts the usual flow of textile waste while emphasizing Europe’s structural role in the fast fashion market and its systems of disposal.
Meanwhile, in Oslo (Norway), the project expanded through new local collaborations and the organization of an international gathering under the installation — this time hosted at the Deichman Bjørvika Public Library. This meeting opened a space for dialogue between diverse experiences and forms of knowledge, deepening the perspectives emerging from each context.
Now, in its fourth stage, re-(t)exHile moves to the Atacama Desert — one of the world’s main destinations for textile waste. Together with curator Rodolfo Andaur, we undertook a research journey through Alto Hospicio, in the Tarapacá region. Along the way, we collected discarded garments lying in the desert, adding them to the textile-refuge currently exhibited at the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos in Santiago. The textile is accompanied by audiovisual documentation that traces the process of working on site.
Beyond the assumption that the desert is an empty territory, this ongoing research delves into the complex web of factors affecting the communities living alongside these waste sites. The project operates through two interwoven axes: on one hand, the sociopolitical conditions experienced by these communities — what happens when a community network coexists with waste? — and on the other, the geotraumas that reshape landscapes and daily practices.
It is clear that the exponential increase in textile waste has generated layers of fabric that adhere to the ground — a perpetual symptom of how waste becomes part of the earth’s stratification.
Each stage of re-(t)exHile interrogates the global and local structures that sustain the circuits of production, consumption, and disposal — structures that shape human and non-human bodies and relationships. Thanks to our collaborators, this action remains a living, situated, and critical form of research.
