Pausing for Plastic Plants
FAMILY PLASTIC SCULPTURE
Plastic into Art
Yannis de Larte Museum Exhibition
It is become a habit, a daily activity amongst my family which never ceases to be as the waves spit out new chunks onto the shores each day we return. I believe that these small actions of getting involved like cleaning the beaches will eventually turn into bigger ones. I have strong hope that those who participate will soon find themselves feeling increasingly connected with the natural world. Inspired by an artist that we stumbled across in Portugal called Yannis de Larte, who spent two years of her life collecting trash in a town and using the material to make provocative pieces, we (my family) decided to make a sculpture out of our own trash collections too.
Everyone in the family helped out! My little sister and her friend became extremely engaged constantly bickering over the shape of it then my controlling brother who is usually neutral about almost everything (except pancakes, video games and conspiracy theories) became enthusiastic and suddenly something magical happened: we all worked together in harmony to from a long branchy plastic tree. What really resonated with me was how something so beautiful like art could be formed from trash, essentially the left overs of society, material that is no longer needed, this concept seems ever so powerful to me. If we are able to create beauty and purpose out of waste then aren’t we able to extrapolate those things out of anything? We certainly are so lazy that we attribute the label “waste” to matter that can actually be reused and remoulded into function.
The only distraction disrupting our imaginations while creating the sculpture was the unbearable heat. These past few days have been so hot that everything seems to be boiling up around and in me. Even while making the sculpture I could feel my blood bubbling and fuming under my skin and the hot thick air sticking to my lungs. It is ironic how I am complaining when I was barely outside for more than three hours. Can you imagine that there are people that are exposed to this torturous heat each day for the whole day and more intensely so but in areas of drought where they do not even have access to clean water to satiate their thirst and soften the heat for just a moment? When they finally get water it is never cold and never icy like the water we drink that can immediately quench our thirst .
Thinking about the millions of thirsty and starving souls in East and subsaharan Africa where rainfall has decreased by up to 50% this year in some areas which also happen to be plagued by the increasingly spread of disease due to climate change and heat makes me pause. Thinking about how if the earth’s mean temperature increase by 4 degrees C, 300 million more people will be affected by Malaria urges me to pause. I urge you to pause too. Pause carefully next time you see garbage on the floor and remember how lucky you are go be who you are and where you are. Pause and pick it up, it really is the least you can do.
While our trivial arts and crafts represent hope and show somewhat of a commitment, we must still pause and remember just how severe this issue is that we face. It is so severe that one person’s attempt to help, it is only a speak. Our choices, our collective choices are the only ones that have the real power to aggravate the situation or to calm it, to take lives or to spare them, to break nature or to stabilise it. These choices I speak of are reflected in our consumer patterns, in our reactions to our surroundings. Not wasting water, opting for the sustainable choice, offsetting your carbon footprint, recycling and reusing goods, choosing to pick up trash when you walk past it. Why? Every little bit counts. Perhaps it doesn’t really make a big difference individually but as I said it combined with many other little bits, it would. It is our collective choices and patterns that will unlock the solution to this issue. Start with the small things and then enable these actions to continuously grow until we have conquered this crisis.