Consuming Plastic: Streets of Delhi

After a few years of creating artworks of marine life integrating plastic into their corporeal structure to represent the impacts of chemical and plastic pollution on the marine food web, I created this series of figures in various landscapes to explore how ubiquitous the material is, even in remote areas. In a wide array of contexts, urban to rural, ‘developed’ to emergent economies, we rely on plastic as a material that is oft taken for granted. And indeed! it is a very important material. Were it not for plastic, creatures who carried ivory would have been hunted to extinction. Turtles were already over-harvested for their shells and whales for their blubber…and this was before the mass population explosion of our own species. We simply do not have the natural resources to support our population’s consumption. Plastic is an essential component in mobilities; both in our physical mobilities and the technology on which we have become entirely dependent. As a byproduct of oil, it will be pervasive as long as we consume too many fossil fuels.

Where plastic presents the biggest problems is when it IS taken for granted. When we consume so much single-use plastic, it devalues our perception of the material. We see it as something we can throw ‘away’ however there is no ‘away’ and it has choked our landfills, filled our waterways and causes devere disruptions to our bodies and ecologies. Tuning into our relationship with plastic helps to re-value this material that has helped define the anthopocene, for better and worse.

All works: Oil over marine debris inlaid into foamcore | 2014

Plastic covers bananas in groves in the West Indies to help ripen the fruit and combats destructive insects without having to broadcast as many pesticides.

A toy shop in the floating market in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam displays an assortment of plastic toys for sale.

A grandmother in Kenya walks through a group of students dressed in and holding an assortment of plastic paraphernalia.

A group of women along the sacred Ganga river in Varanasi, India use an assortment of plastic objects as part of their rituals of worship.

Road construction in Honolulu, Hawai’i warn drivers against the dangers presented by the torn up street.

A Mayan mother refreshes herself with coke in a plastic bottle at the weekly market.

Fishermen in Greece rely on plastic to bring in their catch

A dugout canoe in the Okavango Delta, Botswana protects cargo with plastic tarps.

A grandmother in Bolivia protects her traditional crafts from rain in her market stall.