08/05/2026
At the 61st Venice Biennale, BTB23 artist Victoria-Idongesit Udondian presents Obroni Wawu — a monumental textile installation confronting the hidden realities of the global second-hand clothing industry.
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Invited by Koyo Kouoh as part of In Minor Keys, Udondian transforms discarded garments into a powerful meditation on labour, migration, environmental violence, and the afterlife of consumption. Working across sculpture, sound, installation, and performance, the Nigerian artist creates a physical landscape shaped by accumulation, memory, and survival.
Drawing from research and interventions developed between New York, Ghana, and Nigeria, Obroni Wawu examines the movement of used clothing from the global North into African markets such as Kantamanto in Accra. Through repurposed textiles, layered soundscapes, and performances inspired by the experiences of kayayei women labourers, the work exposes the unequal systems embedded within fast fashion and global trade. Yet rather than approaching these questions through spectacle, Udondian allows meaning to unfold slowly — through texture, repetition, gesture, and the emotional weight carried by the materials themselves.
In our conversation with the artist, Udondian reflects on sustainability as transformation, the layered histories embedded within second-hand garments, and how subtlety can hold immense political and emotional force. At a moment when the world is increasingly overwhelmed by excess, speed, and disposability, her work insists on slowness, attention, and the possibility of reimagining what has been discarded.
Read the full interview on link in bio.
