12 Art Installations That I Made To Highlight The Environmental Crisis We Are Facing
As human beings, we go through so much junk. Every day, we make dozens of small decisions to buy more stuff – at the supermarket, malls, online… For most of my life, I didn’t think it mattered. After all, I was just one tiny speck on Earth, making a couple of small decisions.
But one day, I found myself in a landfill surrounded by endless mountains of everyone’s ‘small decisions’ and realized that maybe those small decisions added up after all.
Since then, I have been gathering volunteers, artists, non-profits, and companies to come together and create art installations that help to bridge the gap between statistics and emotions.
Each and every piece has an educational video that goes with it and I truly hope that one of them will touch your heart!
More info: Instagram | youtube.com | vonwong.com
‘The Parting of the Plastic Sea’ was made from 168,000 plastic straws collected over 6 months
With my latest piece, I wanted to find a unique way to showcase the threat our oceans and future generations are under. It took us 6 months to collect 168,000 straws recovered off the streets of Vietnam.
Every single piece of plastic ever made still exists on the planet today in one form or another. How terrifying to think that all those little purchase decisions we make add up to so much over one lifetime? ‘The parting of the plastic sea’ hopes to bring focus on one tiny part of the problem: straws.
By the year 2050, there could be more plastic than fish in the sea. Which sounds crazy! But when you look at the combination of overfishing, which is currently depleting more and more species of sea creatures and threatens the stability of the world’s oceans, and combine that with the problematic production of plastics… That’s when you start to realize how bad the situation is.
This is how the art installation was created
This mermaid is lying on 10,000 plastic bottles – the number of bottles the average American uses over the course of their life
This is how it was created
These ‘Toxic Laundry’ monsters represent the microplastic fibers released every time we wash our sports clothes
This is how I made the ‘Toxic Laundry’ art installation
This waterfall is made from thousands of used shirts highlighting the 2500 liters of water it takes to make a single cotton t-shirt
The fashion industry is one of the largest polluters on our planet. That tornado you see? Well, it was made entirely out of clothing scraps left behind by the clothing factory that went bankrupt 10 years ago.
This is how I created it
This cave is made from 18,000 plastic cups, collected from foodcourts in just one and a half days with the help of volunteers
What if every one of us could become a little bit more ‘plasticophobic’? With less than 10% of plastics recycled every single year, we’re starting to run out of time to save our oceans.
This is how it was created
This vortex is made from hundreds of used computers to show how past technologies can be recycled to power future devices
This is how it was created
This closet fits one lifetime of clothing
It’s so hard to explain numbers sometimes until you get the chance to experience the scale of it. With the Tallest Closet In The World, we wanted people to have a sense of empowerment to believe in their own ability to affect the size of their own closet. Clothing has a massive environmental footprint and is something that we can individually control.
This is how it was created
Series showing individual action isn’t enough to solve the plastic problem
Recycling is great, but what happens to plastic in the smaller, poorer and more remote cities that aren’t set up for it? They’re stuck dealing with first world commodities that were built to last forever with no way of getting rid of it. Every 60 seconds, a truckload of plastic enters the ocean. Statistics are hard to visualize so we decided to show it instead. Let’s get corporations to commit to finding a better alternative to plastics!!
Image credits: vonwong
This is how it was created
Particle accelerator out of keyboards
This is how it was created
A Portal out of Circuit Boards made to create an easy way for people to talk about e-waste recycling
How it’s done:
Did you know that 70M trees are cut down every year to make the clothing that we wear?
What kind of future are we leaving for the next generation? Please, help us turn off the plastic tap
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Beautiful work. Excellent way to get people to pay attention to your message.
Ok... well now I pretty much feel like a piece of sh*t for drinking from water bottles, and using straws--which is good because now I'm aware-- but...I had no clue about it taking so much water to make ONE cotton t-shirt!! & our sports wear ...sooo what am I supposed to wear? No more yoga pants --but cotton? Can anyone recommend alternatives ?
The best thing is to not find alternatives, but keep your items as long as possible! When they wear out, buy the highest quality replacements you can, or buy second-hand items. Fast fashion is what we call the clothing industry that relies on making cheap garments that either break quickly, or go out of fashion equally as fast. They're cheap because the companies cut corners - by either creating vast environmental damage or exploiting people (or usually both). I think a couple of years ago, there was a really good example of how crazy this has become with Missguided selling a brand new, full-price bikini for £1. Clothing shouldn't be that cheap. We don't need a small group of people living perfectly sustainable lifestyles, we need millions of people living imperfectly, but trying to cut down on bad practises as much as they can :)
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You're extremely talented. I found it difficult to reconcile my enjoyment of the beauty of your shot framing and lighting with my sadness at the editorial content of the photos. Really well done. I feel like art should tug at your emotions. Good art manages to tug at opposing emotions simultaneously.
Provocative art without facebook cliché? Actual quality? I'm leasantly surprised.
It sucks to me that I have to admire something so beautiful yet destructive :/
You can connect for good cause as,Muze is a global humanitarian organization that is committed to using the arts to bring healing and freedom. This is accomplished by creating social equity for individuals who are less privileged, more vulnerable, and more oppressed; specifically, those who are at a higher risk for human trafficking. Muze has two main focuses: prevention and restorative justice. its really good and focuses on supporting individuals who are at a high risk of human trafficking; these are predominantly runaway/homeless children, and those who have low socioeconomic status you can attend pottery workshop chicago and learn doing fun thing in chicago both for adult and kids Muze provides a means for education and skills to help those who lack resources for more info: check https://www.muzearts.com/about
It's great that we have these conversations over how to reduce our own ecological footprints. However micro plastic presence and plastic pollution are mainly due to the fishing industry. We should hold the industry responsible for fixing the issue that they have created. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-fishing-gear-is-biggest-plastic-polluter-in-ocean-finds-report
Great Earth Day Article. Just on holiday in Carib and paper straws are really catching on. Say 50% of bars had them including Marriott.
Beautiful and powerful but terribly unfinished. True, plastics are a big problem and we can thank the governments for that. The absolute biggest threat to everyone's environments around the globe , is the chemically saturated skies. These chemicals that are being sprayed in the name of weather manipulating are killing every living thing on earth, and that includes you and me. GeoengineeringWatch.org
Right Panda Panda. Can we figure out a solution. Something other than nudity and dirty clothes from spilling our drinks because we can't drink without straws?
If people spent half the time that they spend complaining about plastic waste actually trying to figure out a solution, we'd probably have one by now.
You can use reusable straws and tuppaware. I use metal straws, but you can get glass, silicone, bamboo, paper. There are tonnes of other options :)
Load More Replies...
Beautiful work. Excellent way to get people to pay attention to your message.
Ok... well now I pretty much feel like a piece of sh*t for drinking from water bottles, and using straws--which is good because now I'm aware-- but...I had no clue about it taking so much water to make ONE cotton t-shirt!! & our sports wear ...sooo what am I supposed to wear? No more yoga pants --but cotton? Can anyone recommend alternatives ?
The best thing is to not find alternatives, but keep your items as long as possible! When they wear out, buy the highest quality replacements you can, or buy second-hand items. Fast fashion is what we call the clothing industry that relies on making cheap garments that either break quickly, or go out of fashion equally as fast. They're cheap because the companies cut corners - by either creating vast environmental damage or exploiting people (or usually both). I think a couple of years ago, there was a really good example of how crazy this has become with Missguided selling a brand new, full-price bikini for £1. Clothing shouldn't be that cheap. We don't need a small group of people living perfectly sustainable lifestyles, we need millions of people living imperfectly, but trying to cut down on bad practises as much as they can :)
Load More Replies... You're extremely talented. I found it difficult to reconcile my enjoyment of the beauty of your shot framing and lighting with my sadness at the editorial content of the photos. Really well done. I feel like art should tug at your emotions. Good art manages to tug at opposing emotions simultaneously.
Provocative art without facebook cliché? Actual quality? I'm leasantly surprised.
It sucks to me that I have to admire something so beautiful yet destructive :/
You can connect for good cause as,Muze is a global humanitarian organization that is committed to using the arts to bring healing and freedom. This is accomplished by creating social equity for individuals who are less privileged, more vulnerable, and more oppressed; specifically, those who are at a higher risk for human trafficking. Muze has two main focuses: prevention and restorative justice. its really good and focuses on supporting individuals who are at a high risk of human trafficking; these are predominantly runaway/homeless children, and those who have low socioeconomic status you can attend pottery workshop chicago and learn doing fun thing in chicago both for adult and kids Muze provides a means for education and skills to help those who lack resources for more info: check https://www.muzearts.com/about
It's great that we have these conversations over how to reduce our own ecological footprints. However micro plastic presence and plastic pollution are mainly due to the fishing industry. We should hold the industry responsible for fixing the issue that they have created. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-fishing-gear-is-biggest-plastic-polluter-in-ocean-finds-report
Great Earth Day Article. Just on holiday in Carib and paper straws are really catching on. Say 50% of bars had them including Marriott.
Beautiful and powerful but terribly unfinished. True, plastics are a big problem and we can thank the governments for that. The absolute biggest threat to everyone's environments around the globe , is the chemically saturated skies. These chemicals that are being sprayed in the name of weather manipulating are killing every living thing on earth, and that includes you and me. GeoengineeringWatch.org
Right Panda Panda. Can we figure out a solution. Something other than nudity and dirty clothes from spilling our drinks because we can't drink without straws?
If people spent half the time that they spend complaining about plastic waste actually trying to figure out a solution, we'd probably have one by now.
You can use reusable straws and tuppaware. I use metal straws, but you can get glass, silicone, bamboo, paper. There are tonnes of other options :)
Load More Replies... 
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