Dead Media and Assemblage Art

While reading Garnet Hertz's explantation of the Dead Media Research Lab's project to creatively repurpose e-waste, the strategy of several contemporary African artists came to mind: El Anatsui, Moffat Takadiwa, and Serge Attukwei Clottey. All three of these artists collect, sort, and recombine waste shipped from the United States and Europe to landfills where they live into beautiful textiles, often employing others in their community to help. They sell these textiles back to mostly Western art collectors, essentially sending our trash back to us and benefiting financially from the process. This practice operates at a relatively small scale considering the massive inundation they face, but is a surprisingly effective local response to the unjust distribution of waste and profit. 

The links below are for works by these artists on view in Los Angeles:

El Anatsui

https://www.thebroad.org/art/el-anatsui

Moffat Takadiwa

http://www.nicodimgallery.com/artists/moffat-takadiwa

Serge Attukwei Clottey

https://curate.la/event.php?id=18223