Edwin Boye

Edwin Adokwei Boye (b. 1997, Accra) is a visual artist working with Afro-Surreal Expressionism, sustainability, and cultural storytelling. As a self-taught artist, Boye cultivated his passion for art through extensive research while studying Marketing at the University of Professional Studies, Accra. He transforms discarded textiles from Ghana’s secondhand market, beaches and landfills through digital manipulation, image transfer, and painting to explore identity and consumerism.

His solo exhibition Science of My Untamed Thoughts was shown at the Goethe-Institut, Accra (2023). In 2025 he collaborated with Austrian artist Zoe Köbrunner on a public intervention sparking dialogue on textile transformation. Boye received sponsorship from the Goethe-Institut (2023), and his works has been acquired by private and institutional collectors. He has served as Gallery Manager at Berj Gallery Ghana since 2025, following four years as a gallery worker.

Edwin Boyes project traces the journey of discarded clothes as they travel between Europe and West Africa. In Accra, I work with textiles from the agbogboloshie landfill, Jamestown beach and Kantamanto Market, one of the world’s largest secondhand clothing hubs, transforming waste into artworks and public interventions that speak to hidden stories of labor, value, and culture.

For his residency at MQ, he wants to bring these garments back into dialogue with the city’s own systems of consumption and disposal. Mariahilferstraße, with its endless flow of new fashion, and the Spittelau waste incineration plant, where trash is burned for energy, represent two ends of this cycle. The artists wants to create artworks and public interventions that weave together clothes from Kantamanto with garments collected in Vienna, symbolically closing the loop.

Through this act of return, he hopes to invite reflection on our shared responsibility in shaping more sustainable futures.