Waste is a significant global issue, but for some arists it is an inspiration to spark a conversation about environmental problems and to comment about pollution and consumption.
London-based artist Gayle Chong Kwan started exploring themes connected with waste around 2008: the artist is known for her works in which she reuses food waste - citrus peels, apple cores, banana skins, and other food remains and organic materials - in imaginative ways. Quite often she carves out of these materials buildings and cities in ruins (as she did for her project "Paris Remains", 2008) or recreates landscapes that she then photographs.
The discarded and recycled materials, crafted into mysterious and immersive environments have a surreal and mysterious quality about them: "Atlantis" (2014) is for example an enormous fantastical tourist resort created in miniature, carved out of clear and frosted plastic waste food packaging materials.
Chong Kwan used the same materials to recreate housing developments in China inspired by European themes, such as Thames Town in Shanghai, which is a replica of a traditional English town. In this case the materials were employed to create a form of reverse chinoiserie or "angloiserie", reflecting the changing relationship between the East and West.
Inspired by the growth of the intensive dairy industry on water, land use, CO2 emissions and biodiversity in New Zealand, Chong Kwan developed the installation "Wastescape: weaving landscapes of politics, dairy and waste" (2019). In this case she employed over six thousand used plastic milk bottles, collected from schools and communities to create stalactites and stalagmites of waste, a sculptural landscape that she installed at London's Hayward Gallery, but also in New Zealand, in the Auckland Harbour, in this case accompanied by a series of sculptural headdresses that invited visitors to think about he environmental effects of New Zealand's dairy industry through Maori weaving techniques.
The results of her explorations on waste are imaginative and scary as all the food waste and discarded elements push you to ponder about excess, the superfluous and the value of food waste and at how we are exploiting our natural sources, while stimulating a debate on the importance of reducing waste in order to lessen our impact on the environment.
At the moment Chong Kwan has got a new exhibition, "Waste Archipelago" at Galleria Alberta Pane in Venice (until 24th July 2021), that also features her collages made of waste materials.
Last year the artist also worked on an online textile project entitled "Dream Tapestry: Social Sewing Session" that consisted in creating a communal tapestry of lockdown dreams during the COVID-19 Emergency.
Chong Kwan collected descriptions of dreams that people living in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, in the UK and the rest of the world had during lockdown. She has been embroidering these as hand sewn texts hidden in the inside seams and folds of clothes, to be exhibited online and in public. The clothes will eventually be donated to charity shops in Waltham Forest. So, who knows, in future Chong Kwan may consider moving from food and plastic waste onto textile waste as well.
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