From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
The Leather Reconstruction—A Participatory Mapping Installation
This is an ongoing durational project. For earlier textile-based adaptations, see Leather as Living Archive—Material Memory, Craft Knowledge, and the Doctrine of Return in Global Beach Surgery Textile-Based Adaptation Communities.
The Leather Reconstruction is a multi-site, durational participatory installation in which communities across West Africa, East Africa, and the wider Sahel region collaborate to reconstruct Katita's armour through collective textile work, walking routes, and oral testimony.
Beginning in Addis Ababa in 2026, the project invites participants to stitch segments of red leather while mapping local cartographies—neighborhoods, markets, rivers, listening routes—onto cloth. Each site produces its own armor iteration, sewn with materials and techniques native to the region: kente in Ghana; arpilleras methods in the Sahel; indigo-resist traditions in Senegal. The accumulated leather is then carried—never sold, never displayed—to the next site, where it is reconstructed anew with local additions.
The installation formalizes the leather surplus motif: There is enough leather for the seventh loop, and for the eighth, and for all loops that follow. It treats armor-making as an act of care ethics, collective memory, and refusal—each stitch a vote against the finality of the cycle.
No single archive or photographic documentation exists [citation needed]. Knowledge circulates through participant testimony, song, and community radio. The project explicitly refuses musealization.