We are delighted to announce the first day of the Gathering, the public program of the re-(t)exhile exhibition at Deichman Bjørvika Library. The project hosts an international gathering with participants from diverse backgrounds, coming together to question dominant narratives of responsibility and sustainability in the Global North.
Please see the schedule below. The event is free of charge, no registration needed and all conversations will be held in English.
The program of this event is generously supported by KORO, Fritt Ord, and Deichman Bjørvika.
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16:00 Welcome by KORO and Erik Kaspartu Head of Exhibition - Oslo Public Library
16:10 re‑(t)exHile. A research device engaging local communities to explore the global environmental, socio-cultural, and economic impacts of fashion’s waste. Introducing the re‑(t)exHile project, an ongoing artistic research initiative. The conversation will reflect on the team’s collaborative experience in Lagos for the 2021 Biennale and highlight the project’s process-oriented and participatory methodology, showing how collective engagement with local agents can transform material, social, and public spaces while fostering dialogue about responsibility and sustainability.
Round table with Martinka Bobrikova, Adebola Badmus, Oscar de Carmen, María Alejandra Gatti, moderated by Kwame Aidoo
16:50 Break
17:00 Making fast fashion out of fashion. Norway is an affluent country with a high level of imports of new clothes and exports of used ones. At the same time, Norway is a society with a strong handicraft tradition, global clothing, and small scale and home production of textiles. We therefore represent both the problem, and a solution to the problem we are facing: an overproduction of textiles. Ingun will explain why the Circular economy doesn’t solve any problems as it is rolling out in EU policies today and how it’s also possible to make a future with better clothing and less pollution.
Talk by Ingun Grimstad Klepp
17:40 Break
17:50 Sowing imagination. La Unión Textiles Semillas (UTS) is a community of weavers that emerged in north-western Argentina with the aim of bringing together groups of women organised around artisanal textile work and women dedicated to researching, teaching, and defending the value of handmade textile work, as well as the imagination and knowledge contained in the patterns, weaves, and knots. What the fibres twisted with one's own body remember and breathe
The verb mismear is used in the Andean region of northern Argentina to refer to the action of spinning by hand using a stick called a kisma. It is a word that comes from the Quechua mis-mi, which can be translated as ‘to spread out’. In July 2025, the UTS convened an assembly in the mountains entitled ‘Mismear: a poetics of expanded turning’. Andrei Fernández will share an audiovisual documentary and an interpretation of that gathering, which is proposed as an itinerant school for the care of the collective imagination.
Audiovisual documentary and talk by Andrei Fernandez
18:30 Break
18:40 The violence of donated clothing. When you donate your clothing, who really benefits?
Talk by Sunny Dolat (The Nest Collective)
19:00 Delivery Details. A Return To Sender, a film incorporating contributions, reflections, and perspectives from journalists, trade unionists, and others engaged with or affected by the circulation of second-hand clothing.
Film by The Nest Collective. 2022.
Duration: 17:26
19:20 End
download the full program here
Participants BIOS
Adebola Badmus is a Nigerian creative designer and textile artist whose work spans fabric manipulation, garment construction, and experimental design. Drawing on Nigeria’s vibrant design traditions, Adebola explores how textiles embody history and identity, reimagining cloth as a medium for bespoke fashion, cultural storytelling, and reflection on cycles of consumption, community, and renewal in contemporary society.
Kwame Aidoo is an artist and writer from Ghana, with a background of BSc Biochemistry from KNUST, Kumasi. He is the founder of Nkabom Festival, Portals of Ghana, Buzanga Books and Ngarin Weaving Village. Ngarin reimagines collective handloom weaving in shared spaces, with open source methodologies for returning to circular processes, while exploring sustainability-driven ideologies, storytelling and archival potential of fashion.
Ingun Grimstad Klepp has numerous publications aimed both for the scientific and general public covering cultural, social, technical and practical dimensions of clothes. She is a leading researcher on the use-phase of apparel, how clothes are procured and disposed of, repaired and cared for, and has worked to ensure that life-span and use are included in the environmental debate.
Andrei Fernández is an independent curator and researcher. She explores possibilities for intersections between social economy, contemporary art and popular education, collaborating with artists, activists, and researchers. Since 2017, she has been working closely with weavers from the Wichí people in the Gran Chaco. She is co-founder of Union Textiles Semillas, an organization that brings together nearly 300 women from northwestern Argentina.
Sunny Dolat is a Kenyan curator and creative director whose interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections of art, identity, and cultural memory while interrogating visual culture as both a site of representation and resistance. In 2012, he co-founded The Nest Collective, a Nairobi-based multidisciplinary group working across film, fashion, visual art, and music.
Outi Pyy is the Chief Sustainability Officer at IVALO.COM, Sustainability Influencer, Speaker, and sustainable fashion critic. She is also an expert in sustainable garment care and recycling fashion, whose opinions and insights are highly valued and sought after in the Finnish media. Outi is the first Sustainability Influencer in Finland. Her main channel is Instagram.
Kallol Datta is an artist and researcher based in Kolkata. Their practice reflects upon reconstructing and restructuring donated items of clothing and reclaimed textiles that hold memory and episodic events, to negotiate larger questions about work and production, of labour and use, and of ideas revolving around research as production.
Rodolfo Andaur is a visual art curator, writer and cultural manager based in the Atacama desert. He studied journalism and holds an MA in Art History. He has worked directing, promoting and diffusing transdisciplinary projects. Furthermore Rodolfo Andaur has taken part in curatorial teams that focus on critical analysis and reflection about anthropocene, climate change and eco-geopolitics in Latin America. Not only those proposals produce knowledge through the visual arts, but they have also contributed to the dissemination of renewed thoughts to research into unknown territories. Also Andaur is currently a columnist in several online art magazines and visiting lecturer in a couple of universities and art institutions.
Marium Durrani is an anthropologist and lecturer at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. Marium earned her Ph.D. from Aalto University in Finland, where she specialized in studying communal repair events and their role in fostering resilience and well-being in societies. She also holds an M.Phil. in Environment and Sustainability from the University of Oslo, Norway. Marium also works as an independent consumer culture consultant.
Bobrikova & de Carmen are a duo whose work explores social transformation and the ties between economic systems and natural environments. Through diverse media, they address themes of utopia, identity, and community, emphasizing collaboration and critical reflection. As founders of initiatives like The Union and Anti-Symposium, they challenge conventional art practices and foster dialogues that reimagine the role of art in society.
María Alejandra Gatti is an interdisciplinary practitioner, curator, writer and editor. She co-directs metaninfas, a critical curatorial and editing platform. Her current work investigates collective processes and practices that focus on open, displaced and constantly moving dynamics. She uses editorial work as a tool for action to circulate artistic projects and practices.