FLOWING UPSTREAM Designs in the Wasteocene
(2026)

The contribution of my practice-led research is the development of a curatorial proposal for a post-exhibition1 called “Flowing Upstream”, which targets the problem of waste colonialism through transversal strategies. The project establishes an internal circular economy2 that inverts the dominant direction of global waste flows by sending textile waste from West Africa to Europe, where it is turned into art, creating new cultural capital and economic value. Opportunities and revenues arising will be shared equally among all parties involved and used to sustain the cooperation.
The research is situated between Europe and West Africa. It investigates global infrastructures, histories, and politics to trace how material and symbolic violence is structurally encoded into systems and to explore how they might be counteracted. This thesis should be seen as a section of a larger investigation process, which I would like to continue in a PhD thesis. During the 2-year-long research process, my work has been guided by the following main research question (a) and three sub-questions (b,c,d):
(a) How can South-North international cooperation act for systemic change in the context of waste-colonialism in West Africa?
(b) How can decoloniality3 be put into practice throughout the cooperation?
(c) How can systems thinking critically inform the process?
(d) How can artistic strategies help to shape discourses, images and actions for creating a sense of purpose and mutual empowerment?
The allied research methodology is based on a cooperative experience with Nnoboa Space, a joint initiative between organisations, artists, designers, entrepreneurs and activists from Ghana, Germany and Switzerland. Nnoboa Space physical base is hosted by the NGO Social Entrepreneurship Hub in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana. The text’s theoretical context is centred around decolonial political ecology, postcolonial and post-development theory, Marxist, feminist anthropology and geography, systems thinking, circular design, and curatorial studies.