Recycling Discarded Histories to Chronicle Identities: Making Art from Waste in Mozambique

Contemporary Mozambican artists who utilize recyclia as media createartworks that chronicle their society through bits and pieces of its discardedhistories. Creating quintessentially Mozambican art, symbolic materialsbecome potent signifiers of this developing nation. This article exploresmultivalent themes including object materiality, recycling, art making inAfrica, and post-conflict resolution to determine why and how Mozambicanartists utilize post-consumer waste. Factors including past wars, poverty,and a quest for creative expansion have contributed to widespread useof recycling as an artistic practice in Mozambique, despite artists' variedeconomic, social, and educational levels. Mozambican artists who recycletheir nation's pre-used remnants not only connect to past cultural andartistic practices; they continue these traditions within contemporarycontexts. By creating artwork from cast-off materials, artists illustratehow recycling permeates all levels of society, including its broad expansioninto art making, and how the use of reprocessed materials both inspiresand instills a sense of pride in artistic practices. Themes addressed in artwork made from recyclia include politics, social commentary, and culturalheritage. Artists include Fiel, who transforms destroyed weapons ofMozambique's past wars into powerful tools for peacebuilding and postconflict resolution; Cármen, who uses her old dresses to create hangingfabric pieces that capture shadows creating dissonance between light anddark; João, who calls for donations of jeans on Facebook that he will patchtogether and use as a variegated background supports for painting; andPekiwa, who critiques Mozambican society through his use of recycledboats, windows, and doors.