The Bodies Left Behind

The Bodies Left Behind by Serge Attukwei Clottey
Boat, found objects, rubber, wood, metal, repurposed plastics

Somewhere between sculpture and social commentary, The Bodies Left Behind transforms discarded materials into a vessel of truth. Created by Ghanaian artist Serge Attukwei Clottey, the piece confronts the environmental and cultural aftermath of global travel—what visitors leave in their wake, and who must live with it.

Clottey is internationally recognized for his practice of repurposing yellow Kufuor gallons—plastic containers once used to transport water in Ghana—into monumental tapestries and sculptural forms. His work speaks to water scarcity, migration, climate change, and the intimate entanglement of Africa with global consumption. With The Bodies Left Behind, he turns his attention to the western traveler’s effect on Africa’s coastline.

At the heart of the installation is a boat—found, salvaged, and refitted as both literal and symbolic vessel. It carries not treasure but detritus: rubber shoes, scraps of plastic, and industrial waste, echoing the tide of objects that wash up on Ghana’s shores after being discarded elsewhere. In Clottey’s words, “When westerners visit Africa, they are the ones that loot and pollute the ocean… I wanted to show people in a luxurious space how they affect our country, using it as a conversation starter.”

Originally staged at the Ritz-Carlton in South Beach, Miami, the exhibition created an uneasy juxtaposition: raw, hand-assembled materials against the polished backdrop of luxury hospitality. Guests entering the lobby encountered not a neutral decoration, but a provocation—an African perspective on global systems of waste and privilege.

The work’s title asks us to look past the visible to what remains unseen: the bodies, objects, and ecologies altered by movement across oceans. Installed at Art City, The Bodies Left Behind situates those questions in the high desert of New Mexico, tying local scarcity to global circulation.

The boat waits quietly, heavy with its cargo of cast-offs. It is at once elegy and warning, a reminder that nothing we consume or discard ever truly disappears.