Artist: Mari-Leen Kiipli
Title: Plastic Ways, Salty Stones
Venue: Draakoni Gallery, Tallinn
Photos: Anna Mari Liivrand
Salty seawater polishes coastal stones to a smooth gloss, erodes shorelines, and gives rise to clay and sand. Metamorphic rocks, erratic boulders, stones embedded within other stones – all formed in the heat of the earth’s crust, from once-pliable matter. The wave that erodes the land brings in concrete, gravel, and synthetic debris. A diffuse presence drifts through the seawater – plastic particles circulating in my bloodstream, embedded in my tissues.
Plastics were invented to isolate, to shield us from dirt and decay. In our pursuit of cleaner, sleeker environments, the very material we devised as a barrier has begun to reshape us. Micro- and nanoplastics circulate through air currents between land, sea, and atmosphere. It crumbles from our hands and disperses, merging with bodies, water, and sand to form conglomerates and new sediments. Even though we have shaped it, we cannot fully grasp what forms it will ultimately take. Remaining unchanged, it remakes ecosystems and reconfigures the beings within them. Could bioplastics made from algae offer a solution to the problem of plastic accumulation, or do they merely echo the logic of plastic, the notion that all matter is infinitely formable, malleable, and disposable?
