Bildhalle Amsterdam presents the exhibition Cast Away by Thirza Schaap.
Thirza Schaap combines sculpture with photography and examines our changing relationship with plastics and the increasing and overwhelming presence plastics have in our lives. With her ongoing project Plastic Ocean she wants “to raise awareness around pollution…to try and prevent, or at least reduce, the use of plastic.”
Along the coast of South Africa, Thirza Schaap collects discarded bottles and shopping bags to create fanciful sculptures, often to photograph them afterwards. Despite their sweet allure, Schaap’s images are also deeply troubling. There has, after all, been a global party, and these pictures are glimpses of its ugly aftermath, shards of the unsustainable volume of refuse from our collective voraciousness. As sites of celebration so often appear the morning after, Schaap’s compositions are full of spent enjoyment, of things now devoid of use, faded, deflated, or broken. These things have been thrown away, but they persist, unable to decompose, resisting deletion.
Thirza Schaap : Cast Away
September 22 – December 2, 2023.
Bildhalle Amsterdam
Willemsparkweg 134H
1071 HR Amsterdam
The Netherlands
www.bildhalle.ch
