Back to square one by ILARIA MARZANO

What if the textile waste generated from Kantamanto Market—one of the largest secondhand markets in the world, located in Accra, Ghana, where the West dumps 15 million used or even unused garments every week—were deposited in our squares and streets?

The answer is displayed in this data-physicalization work called "Back to Square One": In New York, it would consume in just one month the entirety area of Washington Square; in Paris, it would occupy a substantial portion of the Champs-Élysées; and in Milan, it would completely cover Piazza Duomo. And it’s no coincidence that these cities are among the world's fashion capitals.

The artwork serves as a strong and provocative reminder of the textile waste crisis, exposing the imbalance between those who create the waste and those forced to manage it.

In this installation, city maps of New York, Paris, and Milan are printed on recycled cotton canvases. On these canvases, three different patchworks of fabric scraps illustrate the surface area that would be occupied by just one month’s worth of textile waste if packed into bales of 200 garments each, each measuring 70x50 cm.

The installation blends physical and digital elements: the textile maps make the scale of the crisis visible, while the AI-generated pictures imagine a future where these mountains of waste are no longer hidden but take over our cities.

small Update:
In January 2025, a massive fire devastated more than half of Kantamanto Market, displacing a community of over 30,000 people who, despite being overwhelmed by textile waste, have built a resilient economy based on reuse, repair, and remanufacturing.
I hope this visualization plays a small role in making overlooked realities like Kantamanto more visible by transforming data into something tangible and comprehensible.