Kantamanto Market 2023

Curator: This is Joana Choumali's "Kantamanto Market," a vibrant textile piece that captures a bustling scene. What strikes you first about it? Editor: The rawness. It feels like a collage of lived experience, patched together with the grit and energy of the market itself. Curator: It reflects Kantamanto's role in Accra: a place where global textile waste is given new life, a potent symbol of the global economy. The artist is using her own photography printed on fabric. Editor: Yes, and the layering, the fragments—they speak to the fragmented nature of identity and labor in this space. Look at the T-shirt with that slogan, "My life, my choices…" It's all about autonomy. Curator: Exactly. Choumali uses potent symbols to convey not just the visual chaos, but also the social complexities inherent in this center of trade. It's a place of entrepreneurial dreams but also tough realities. Editor: A powerful visual statement about globalization and individual agency. It reminds us that even cast-offs can become central to someone's livelihood. Curator: Indeed, a complex and compelling piece that invites us to consider the stories woven into the fabric of our clothes and lives.