2025 · Kpone, Ghana
Kpone Landfill
The ribbon begins where most of these clothes end. Emmanuel laid it out on the textile landfill east of Accra, a mountain of discarded fashion.
A project by Emmanuel Aggrey Tieku · partner in Europe: To-Choose
How to Heal
a Broken World
A textile ribbon sewn from clothes the Global North throws away. Since 2020 it has grown at every place it visits, from a landfill near Accra to a castle in Saxony and a fair in Paris.
Kpone, Jamestown, Augustusburg, Munich. Film: HTHABW 2025
About the project
Every week around fifteen million pieces of used clothing arrive at the port of Tema. Much of it never sells. It ends up on landfills like Kpone, east of Accra.
Emmanuel Aggrey Tieku, born 1994 in Cape Coast, is a civil engineer and an artist. He collects these clothes at Kantamanto market and on the landfills and sews them into one ribbon.
Wherever the ribbon is installed, people add their own textiles and their stories. Emmanuel plans the project for fifteen years. We bring it to Europe, find the places and build the network around it.
Ellipse Prize 2025
Before 2025: 2020 Butterflies on a Parched Land, Accra 2021 Spaces and Sounds I, Accra 2022 Spaces and Sounds II, Accra 2024 Cross-Sections of a Thousand Lives, Institute Museum of Ghana
Also in Accra, 2025: 2025 Woori Festival at Nubuke Foundation 2025 Billboard Accra
The project site
The ribbon has its own home
Emmanuel Aggrey Tieku’s project site follows every station in pictures, with press coverage and the story of the artist.
Stations 2025
2025 · Accra, Ghana
Jamestown Fishing Harbour
Fishermen took the ribbon out to sea. Stretched between two canoes, it caught the wind like a sail.
2025 · Accra, Ghana
Osu Cemetery
The ribbon among the graves of the Christiansborg cemetery in Osu.
2025 · Saxony, Germany
Schloss Augustusburg
Saxony was once the centre of Europe’s textile industry. On 19 and 20 June the ribbon poured through the castle gate.
2025 · Saxony, Germany
The castle grounds
Outside, it wrapped the trees along the castle wall, made during the makers united residency with Michael Gah and Nyornuwofia Agorsor.
2025 · Chemnitz, Germany
Chemnitz Maker Festival
Shown at the Maker Festival in the Stadthalle Chemnitz.
2025 · Munich, Germany
Alte Utting
A former Ammersee steamer that now stands on a railway bridge in Munich. Here the ribbon became a sail again.
2025 · Munich, Germany
Villa Stuck
Franz von Stuck’s villa was under renovation. The ribbon lay under the glass dome, among dust and scaffolding.
2025 · Paris, France
AKAA Art Fair
Also Known As Africa, the Paris fair for contemporary art and design from Africa.
More pictures of every station on howtohealabrokenworld.com ↗
Three ways in
The ribbon needs people who fund it, places that host it and voices that carry it further.
Funding
Patron
Long-term support that lets Emmanuel plan the next stations.
- Founding Patron in all core documents
- Previews and background talks
- A say in where the project goes
A place
Maker
A museum, a company campus, a public square or a festival that hosts an installation.
- Installation designed for your site
- Your staff and community take part
- Part of the film, book and press work
Reach
Voice
Companies, researchers and initiatives that add their textiles and their solutions.
- Named in the Circle of Allies
- Your textile in the ribbon
- Your work shown to the network