Recycling the future of art
Artist Eko Nugroho works out of Yogyakarta, where he can “see what’s on the TV of my neighbors from my window.”
Side-by-side living has led to a crowd-sourcing approach to his art, which touches on community and recycled materials, such as the plastic bottles he uses for two colorful masks in We Are Here Now at Art SG: Visitors are encouraged to slip under the dangling tribal masks and pose for a Polaroid; the photos are then attached to a silver spacesuit/hazmat sculpture he calls Future Fungus. The goal is to cover the sculpture entirely with photos and display it—but, he smiles: “Not all want to place their photo; some want to keep and collect.”
Eko works with local recyclers, buying discarded plastic ketchup and sauce bottles by the kilo. He cuts them up, paints them, and repurposes it as art.
Masks are a big part of Yogyakarta’s performance culture: “Every performance has a mask, and each mask tells a story. We don’t have so much a written history.” He wanted to give the masks a nature-based look, “but using the plastic that destroys nature.” Recycling the bad into good.
His other work at Art SG is a large-scale woven hanging titled Hands with Sunrise commissioned by Switzerland’s UBS bank, lead partner of Art SG, which has acquired over 30,000 artworks in its collection since the ‘60s.
For such intricate woven pieces, Eko again involves the community, employing local weavers (including his brother). That’s become his modus operandi: sourcing his own community, and the viewing public, to raise consciousness on the ecology issue. For We Are Here Now, “I ask people to join in the responsibility of our producing plastic waste. Over the next few days, it will become a project completed by public involvement and awareness—a symbol of our collective responsibility.”