WELCOME TO THE PLASTIC AGE

Commissioned for the 2024 Biennale de Lyon, this installation reflects on plastic as the defining material of the Anthropocene. Once celebrated for its convenience and promise, it now permeates every aspect of modern life, extending far beyond human use to infiltrate rivers, forests, coral reefs and even the cells of living organisms.

Growing up in Java and living in Bali, my perception of nature is deeply influenced by animist and Hindu cosmologies. I see plastic as a new kind of mythical creature: a faceless force that entwines itself with every ecosystem. Like the hybrid beings of mythology, today's living organisms have become chimeras, merging organic matter with synthetic debris.

The installation imagines a sterile landscape inhabited by these hybrid life forms, existing in uneasy symbiosis with plastic. It is composed of hand-carved panels made from recycled Balinese plastic waste, blurring the boundary between precious artwork and discarded material while questioning the legacy of a substance that has become inseparable from life itself.