Sometimes the Goats Know the Way investigates Tamale’s inner-urban
peripheries through poetry embroidered in white thread onto white Kente cloth. Developed under the heat of Tamale’s open urban
spaces, the project emerged through walking, listening, and field recording when technical equipment failed. Constraint became
method.
The work traces three sites — the Old Airfield, Dakpema Island, and the Waterworks — where communities informally
reappropriate infrastructure through everyday practice. Following the movement of goats through the city, the installation
reflects on forms of spatial knowledge beyond official planning: embodied memory, environmental attunement, and oral exchange.
Field poems are presented in Dagbani, English, and Chinese, positioning the three languages as equal anchors in cross-continental
dialogue. Translation functions as both bridge and artwork.
The
textile triptych embodies the global circuits it references: Kente woven in Ghana from Chinese cotton, embroidered in China
with poems written in Tamale, first exhibited in Vienna, and now presented in Ghana. The cloth becomes a tactile archive —
portable, circulatory, and embedded in local economies.
About the project:
This is the
first presentation of the project in Ghana and completes a diasporic cycle. The work was developed as part of [Applied] Foreign
Affairs, Institute of Architecture (I oA), University of Applied Arts Vienna, in partnership with the Nuku Centre for Photographic
Research and Practice in the context of the AfricaUninet project Tamale’s Inner Urban Ecologies.
Related events:
28 February 2026, 10:30 – 11:30
An intimate reading of field poems from the installation
Public
reading
Location: Nuku Centre for Photographic Research and Practice, Bank Road, Tamale
With: Yunxi Wu, artist/curator,
and Mariam Issahaka, cultural worker
1 March 2026, 10:00 – 11:30
From Text to Textuality to Textile
Panel discussion
A conversation about language, material and space that traces how poems evolve from field notes to
embroidered fabric.
Conversation with: Yunxi Wu; Barbara Putz Plecko; Alhaji Suleman; Mariam Issahaka
Moderators:
Baerbel Mueller and Nii Obodai
Location: Nuku Centre for Photographic Research and Practice, Bank Road, Tamale
