Eat, Drink, Shit Norway

Museum of Modern Art, Norway An installation on plastic maritime pollution,
Japanese Woodcut and used coffee cups,gold paper plates, plastic, koozo and Fabriano.

 

I had to get my hands dirty by something more than ink. For the next work Eat, Drink, Shit Norway at Förde Museum of Modern Art I collected coffee cups digging through trash bins at an exhibition centre showing vintage cars. Fishing up the saliva rimmed cups was a sticky and embarrassing labour in full view of the car-loving audience. In doing so, I could draw attention to those disposable paper cups that are lined with a thin plastic film are almost
impossible to recycle. More inspired by the plastics than the Norwegian fjords I saw that nature has become another consumable and pretty picture on a paper cup. If the audience becomes co-producers through preparatory activities, in this case helping me with collecting used coffee cups, people begin to build emotional expectations. They start to imagine and anticipate the completed work, and makes in the end, a more dynamic public.
Eat, Drink, Shit Norway concluded in a 5 by a 7-meter print installation of toilet roll waterfalls, and the coffee cups a mountain range. Extending the investigation of nano-plastics led to two further public works: SOIL IS THE SKIN OF THE PLANET, and Nothing is Everything on how we breathe, drink and eat plastics by our dependency on single-use food packaging and pervasive plastics. Across the sea and under the surface float marine debris, plastics from tourism and industry composed of broken down bags, micro-pellets in cosmetic, and food packaging. Working with the public, washing food packaging and preparing woodcuts, a shared discussion expands around these biggest threats to maritime health. Disregarding the environment, we fail to see that human rights, in this case, health, start with the rights of the planet.