Ghanaian fashion curator Beatrice “Bee” Arthur is using discarded jeans, damaged mannequins and other waste materials to examine the environmental and human costs of the global fashion industry in a new installation showing at the Accra Art Centre.
Arthur’s JEAN-ESIS: Chapter One is part of BEYOND CREATION: Humanity, Nature and Spirituality, a Universal Message, an exhibition bringing together 40 artists, about 90% of them Ghanaian, for an international cultural exchange focused on humanity’s relationship with nature and spirituality.
The exhibition, which opened privately, is opened to the public until Nov. 4. Arthur’s installation uses materials including used jeans sourced from Kantamanto, damaged mannequins, discarded tyres, textile offcuts, rubber gloves, dead trees, natural materials and other repurposed objects to portray the environmental consequences of fashion’s production and consumption cycle.
The work took four weeks to execute.
Arthur reimagines the biblical Garden of Eden as an environment damaged by fashion overproduction, chemical-intensive manufacturing and pollution. The installation’s damaged mannequins, some 20 years old, are used to evoke garment workers in denim-producing factories across Asia and the potential exposure to dyes, bleaching agents and other chemicals associated with textile manufacturing.
A dead tree in the installation produces plastic fruits, referencing Obroniwawu (old clothes shipped from abroad) bales of discarded clothing associated with Kantamanto, where the jeans used in the work were sourced.
The installation also incorporates dead trees and branches sourced from a cemetery, while used tyres were obtained from vulcanisers in Arthur’s neighbourhood. The serpent featured in the work was hand-stitched and hand-painted.
Rather than presenting the serpent as the traditional villain in the story of humanity’s fall, Arthur uses it as a symbol of wisdom, fertility, regeneration and hope.
The central question posed by the installation is therefore less about who caused humanity’s fall and more about the consequences of human choices toward nature and consumption.
Fashion, waste and Ghana’s creative economy
The work connects Ghana’s growing textile-waste challenge with the economics of the global fashion industry, using discarded clothing as both an artistic medium and a statement about overproduction and overconsumption.
The broader BEYOND CREATION exhibition was attended by artists, heads of cultural institutions, diplomats and government representatives, including Laura Ranalli, Ambassador of Italy to Ghana and Togo, and Dr Fio Richardson Commey, Special Aide to the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts.
Arthur also acknowledged Wakefield Wisdom Ackuaku, Acting Executive Director of the National Commission on Culture, and Eric Ohene-Larbi, Regional Director of the Centre for National Culture, Greater Accra, for their support and institutional collaboration with the Embassy of Italy.
Curated by Nuna Adisenu-Doe and Andrea Walter Ghia, the exhibition places Ghanaian artistic voices at the centre of an international cultural exchange while using contemporary art to explore the relationship between human activity, nature and sustainability.
JEAN-ESIS: Chapter One is on display in Pavilion 2 of the Accra Art Centre as part of BEYOND CREATION, which runs through Nov. 4, 2026.
