Emmanuel Arthur is turning plastic waste into art

feature - Emmanuel Arthur on his practice of upcycle art

Towards the end of JHS, Emmanuel began thinking seriously about becoming an artist. But the instinct to make things from what was available had arrived much earlier: as a child, he and his friends made toy cars from discarded materials, turning whatever they could find into something else.

Years later, the materials have changed, but the impulse has remained remarkably similar: take what is already around you and imagine what else it could become.

His interest in plastic waste began with simply noticing it.

It was everywhere.

He describes becoming increasingly aware of how overwhelming plastic waste had become in his surroundings, to the point where it felt almost impossible to walk a few steps without encountering discarded plastic.

That familiarity is important to his practice. He isn’t working with some distant, abstract symbol of environmental destruction. He is working with the objects that already occupy everyday Ghanaian life.

The food container.

The plastic spoon.

The polythene bag.

The bottle.

The sachet.

The things we use for a few minutes and then leave behind.

Growing up in Ghana, he began noticing how many unnecessary practices had become normalized. A meal bought from a favorite food joint can arrive surrounded by layers of single-use plastic before it has even been eaten. What feels like an ordinary part of getting through the day accumulates into something much larger.

His response is not simply to remove these materials from sight.

He puts them back in front of us.

“I make it a point to create artworks with some of these familiar plastics in Ghana to question our morals,” he says.

There is a quiet accusation contained in that decision.

The plastic doesn’t disappear when it becomes art. In his work, traces of its previous life remain visible — the colours, textures, markings and imperfections that reveal what the material once was.

This is important because the transformation isn’t meant to erase the material’s history.

If anything, it preserves it.

The plastic remains recognizable enough for us to remember where it came from, even as its function changes. What once carried food or water can become something to look at, something to think about, something that asks us to reconsider the value we have assigned to it.

For him, that is where the transformation really happens.

“The material doesn’t really change,” he explains. “What changes is our perception of the material.”

It is an idea that extends beyond the artwork itself.

Waste is often defined by the moment we stop finding something useful. The object has fulfilled its purpose, and suddenly its identity becomes simple: rubbish.

But his practice interrupts that finality.

The discarded object gets another life, not necessarily because it has become more valuable in a conventional sense, but because someone has decided to look at it differently.

Yet he is careful not to romanticize this transformation.

Making something beautiful from waste, he argues, is not enough.

An artwork made from plastic might demonstrate what the material can become, but it does not automatically reduce the amount of plastic entering the environment. A beautiful object cannot, on its own, solve the problem that produced the material in the first place.

For him, responsibility ultimately sits with the choices people make.

His work therefore isn’t simply about turning rubbish into something aesthetically pleasing. It is an invitation to consider our own relationship with the material — and what happens after we have decided we no longer need it.

That distinction gives the work a different kind of urgency.

The artwork is not the solution.

It is the question.

What do we do with the things we consume?

What do we consider disposable?

And what does our willingness to throw something away say about the systems and habits we have accepted as ordinary?

Working with plastic has also changed the artist himself.

The more closely he works with discarded materials, the more aware he has become of the scale of Ghana’s plastic pollution problem. What might initially have seemed like a visible nuisance becomes, through sustained attention, something much harder to ignore.

The material has become a way of seeing.

And increasingly, the work has become an extension of the person making it.

He describes his practice as an extension of himself — something that should not only communicate an idea but reflect something that resonates with him. That understanding has made him more intentional about the subjects he explores and the stories he chooses to tell.

The shift is subtle but significant.

He isn’t simply collecting waste because it is available.

He is deciding what deserves to be said through it.

That may explain why the future of his practice isn’t necessarily about abandoning plastic for another material, but about discovering just how far this one can go.

He is becoming increasingly curious about pushing discarded plastics beyond their obvious function and appearance, while preserving the traces that make each piece distinct.

The material’s previous life remains part of the work.

Its imperfections remain.

Its history remains.

And perhaps that is the most interesting thing about his practice.

He doesn’t ask us to forget that these objects were once waste.

He asks us to look at them long enough to reconsider what that word means.

The child who once made toy cars from whatever he could find has grown into an artist who continues to work from what is already around him.

Only now, the discarded material carries a much larger story.

It tells us something about consumption.

About convenience.

About what we have normalized.

About the distance between using something and taking responsibility for what happens to it afterwards.

And about the possibility that sometimes, before we can change an object, we have to change the way we see it