What words would we put in their place, If these message were not pushed onto us? By Rehema Chachage
JAN VAN ESCH
Hanging clothes, clothes on the floor, mitumba patchwork flowing like creeping vines… Clothes and labels sewn together to form pages, pages that create a book. Is this a book about mitumba? A book of mitumba? A book with mitumba? … Mitumba monsters—bodies clothed in piles of mitumba resembling monsters—move across a projector screen, sometimes within the exhibition space itself in performance movements … Mitumba exchanges in what appear to be European streets are also projected on the screen. Here, we see an uncomfortable, tense grammar on the bodies of those on the receiving end of these exchanges, expected to accept an offering back of their mitumba ‘charity’… the choking smell of mitumba, thick and musty… titles that are poems, perhaps prose… poems with their own titles… framed drawings of clothes… images of the beach swallowing—or perhaps vomiting—clothes… the wave of Kanagawa in four parts… text, slogans, logos, fabric patterns, hanging threads, and the color blue.
These are some of the things one encounters when navigating the Neno kutoka kwa exhibition, which was hanging at La Galerie in the Alliance Française, Dar es Salaam, from September 4 to October 18, 2024. This collaborative project was realized by Jan van Esch in partnership with Lazaro Samuel, Ofure Kitsutsa Omere-Kessi, and Mike Tigere Mavura, who contributed both as a curator and research interlocutor.
In the gallery space, we are met not by silence but by what feels like a dissonant chorus, a layered presence. It is as though we are witnessing a chest crack open, spilling the silent noise of restless treasures, unruly and alive. Mitumba scatter across the gallery as if they are searching for new bodies, seeking to make new connections and memories, as if the gallery itself is a body in need of clothing.
Or perhaps they have already transformed, becoming a body of their own—a body of work, speaking through the unsettling beauty of reassembly: reclaimed, re-imagined, and recontextualized.
The mitumba exhibited here are collected from the streets of the Netherlands and the beaches of Dar es Salaam, where garments—discarded, lost, and forgotten—arrive like ghosts. Their invasion of the gallery space is subtle yet persistent, akin to an invasive species claiming territory and weaving new narratives into the soil. These colonial residues, disguised as second-hand charity, possess a quiet yet dangerous mundanity—a display of what the exhibition curator Mike Tigere Mavura aptly describes as “soft power” masquerading as benevolence. The tension—between what is imposed and what is chosen, between giving and discarding—lies at the center of the exhibition, urging us to confront the quiet violence of cultural exchange and the occupation of Africa’s markets by Europe’s waste. Clothes enter our lives as intimate companions, clinging to our skin and carrying our memories—first dates, baptisms, funerals, and job interviews fraught with uncertainties. But what happens when they outlive their purpose? When garments that hold memories for one person are discarded, only to re-emerge on distant shores without names or faces, carrying only traces of their past existence?
This exhibition feels less like an exhibition in the traditional sense, and more like a distant yet strangely familiar conversation between worn-out garments and the threads that hold them together. These garments speak not only through their materiality but also through the patterns, symbols, and logos they carry—elements that have endured despite the fabric’s aging. Here, textile becomes text—a quiet murmur from the invisible, persistent in its subtle insistence. Here, textile becomes a conversation, one that is about histories and geographies, serving as a meditation on power. The exhibition invites us to confront the discomfort of waste politics, colonial legacies, and the uneasy dynamics of giving and taking. It urges us to dwell at the edges of this discomfort, to reckon with what has been made visible, and to engage with our roles in the ongoing, unsettled relationship between the past and the present, between what is discarded and what is reclaimed.
Through these unspoken dynamics, the exhibition becomes a site of tension—between waste and worth, between the giver and the receiver, and between the global North and the global South. Mitumba, or second-hand clothes, represent a daily reality in Dar es Salaam, woven into the fabric of a larger economic narrative. The question is, where does this economy begin, and whose needs does it truly serve? The garments carry traces of their origins yet converge in this postcolonial city to narrate stories of displacement and imbalanced exchange, ways in which waste flows unevenly across the globe, and how the mitumba economy thrives on discarded clothes born of necessity rather than choice.
When van Esch collects these clothes from the streets of the Netherlands, he performs a gesture that feels familiar—a European hand collecting, categorizing, and offering. Yet, the narrative takes a turn as he repatriates the mitumba to his homeland and other European cities, where the notion of second-hand clothing has recently been reframed as an ecological virtue. Before this rebranding, these garments existed merely as charity, often condescendingly nestled within the narrative of aid. Now, even as they don a new identity—one that claims to serve the environment—some of the recipients of this “charity” appear uncomfortably tense, perhaps even offended by the gesture, as suggested by the reactions captured in the video projected in the exhibition space. What does it signify that those who once extended their generosity now find themselves refusing (even offended by) the very charity they claim to give?
As I navigate through the exhibition space, I find it difficult to form an adjacency with some of the clothes collected. Yet, it is the pieces collected by Lazaro Samuel that truly captivate me: machinga clothing, and makonda uniforms, along with kanga and kitenge outfits, all carrying narratives of the working-class of bongo Dar es Salaam—wavuja jasho. Majority of these garments are rendered in varying shades of the color blue. Hues which symbolize not only the labor of the blue-collar workers but also the emotional and social landscapes of a community whose resilience sustains the economy surrounding these clothes. The invisible women and children who bear the brunt of their production linger quietly in the background, their stories woven into the very fabric of these garments, urging us to acknowledge their often-unseen contributions.
One might ponder the reasons behind Samuel’s particular affinity for these pieces and the ways in which, perhaps, they also intersect with his own biography as an artist—what personal histories, what familial ties, or cultural connections compel him to curate this selection? What adjacency he himself feels to the struggles and aspirations of those who wear these clothes? In their aged and decayed state, these garments invite us to consider the legacies of labor in a postcolonial context. Hence, Samuel’s contribution to the exhibition emerges as a quiet yet potent force, introducing a new narrative, reminding us that even amidst the noise of market transactions, there exist stories of humanity.
I am also struck by the ways in which the DNA of the works presented in the exhibition carries the memories of the community gathered around them, engaged in workshops, discussions, and patchwork exercises that add words, meaning, and growth to the pieces. This patchwork, a living piece of art growing daily with contributions from gallery visitors, becomes a map of shared histories, layered in fabric, thread, and sweat. It embodies a tension between waste and preciousness, revealing the delicate act of transforming discarded materials into a possibility of an otherwise. Here, the DNA of these garments—once detached and lost—finds new roots, merging with the memory of those who have touched, stitched, and been moved by them. At the culmination of this exhibition, the clothes may still recall the bodies they once adorned, yet they also bear the echoes of the community that gathered around them, stitching together not just fabric but shared stories.
In its essence, this exhibition is an intersection between colonial residues and the unsettling beauty of reassembly, the textured quality of art-making processes, and the potential for art to move beyond aesthetics. The brands, logos, and slogans they carry—“Just Do It,” “Control Your Mind or It Will Control You,” “Los Pollos Hermanos,” “Suicidal Tendencies,” “I’m not arguing, I’m explaining why I am right,” “#LIFT THAT SHIT”—speak of a different kind of power, one that penetrates our minds without us even noticing. These discarded pieces of clothing, branded and labeled, are not just fragments of fabric; they are messages.
In this exhibition, they speak back to us quietly yet unmistakably, challenging us to reflect on the narratives we inherit. Here, I wonder What words we would put in their place if these messages were not pushed onto us? Would we articulate our desires and identities freely, or would our voices remain unheard, silenced by the cacophony of imposed meanings?
Rehema Chachage is an artist, writer, educator, and art-based researcher currently completing a PhD in Practice with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Rooted in divergent and decolonial perspectives, she has developed a research-based, process-oriented, and community-centered practice that focuses on alternative and non-canonized knowledge forms, with an emphasis on community-centered and generated knowledge forms; on togetherness and community building as a means of survival; on forms of subversion and refusal that emerge from the mundane and everyday; and on the idea of continuity through citation, naming, and renaming, arguing that citation is a means for repair, re-membering, and, more importantly, refusing erasure.
