U.S. artist cleverly recycles garbage

Mehru Jaffer, Contributor, Jakarta

Ann Wizer's art is very clever. But it will make you cry because it is also caring. The artist is admired for having stepped out of the womb of her studio on to the street to connect with communities.

This American artist wants to find out what is going on in the world for herself.

In today's postmodern cityscape she has discovered that the meaning of life is being fast traded for concrete vessels stuffed with as many consumers as possible resulting in a violence of noise, lights, hype and crowds.

There are more bulldozers by the wayside than trees, rivers are replaced with billions of miles of ribbon like roads and trash is everywhere.

At a time when pyramid after pyramid of garbage dumps are constructed from the discards of industry she finds it impossible to confine herself to a studio to draw pretty pictures. Instead of turning her nose away from the offensive sight and smell of postindustrial waste she takes on the putridity with all the imagination at her command to build something anew from the ruins.

So thrown away Capri Sonne containers are converted into colorful shopping bags and cellophane wrappers are shredded and stuffed into stools and sofas made from transparent plastic.

A basketful of used lighters collected from the beach are stringed together into a chandelier and yet another one is made from countless lenses of sunglasses.

There is more light made from aqua bottles, and a rug from shredded shampoo, and cleaning liquid bottles, in the shape of a bear. With the animal now an endangered species what is left of the poor bear is a mere outline and plenty of plastic instead of real hair.

Asikin Hasan, curator Galeri Lontar told The Jakarta Post that he has admired Ann's work for long as he finds it contemporary, close to life and very conscious about the most pressing problems of our times, especially environment ruination.

Ann feels that garbage is here to stay with us and it is in all our interest to find out what to do with it before all of humanity is flattened into one homogeneous space of Disney theme parks, temples of consumerism and churches of distraction. What is also endangered amongst a lot of other things is a sense of community and its chapels, the wet markets and the meeting places.

Ann's inspiration perhaps lies far beyond the pretty surroundings of her home in South Jakarta in the city's most filthy corners. Her attitude reawakens vanishing wisdom of family elders like my late grandmother who told all her city bred descendants holidaying at her home in the countryside that if they found her courtyard too dusty that they should take the broom and sweep it.

It was about half a decade ago that Ann started to work with trash and even more recently with scavengers. Ann recalls feeling very connected with the physical world even as a child. She liked the feel of natural materials especially pines and bamboo. She likes to go scuba diving and visited the beach often during her stay in the Philippines.

The broken pieces of plastic slippers left in the sand bothered her. So she started to collect them. Curious to know what she was doing children from local hamlets joined her and soon she had accumulated over 3,000 rubber slippers. A doll made from parts of the same rubber is now on display. She also has in her possession thousands of plastic bottles and cellophane wrappers.

"Our cities are littered with trash made from materials we do not want or understand. The story of our archeology is no longer about banana leaves, arrowheads and chicken bones. Products are designed and produced from an almost irresponsible point of view. For example shampoo bottles, toothpaste tubes, drink containers.we want the product but what to do with the indestructible bottle or tube?" is the question.

And she answers herself by designing clothes made of plastic waste and used tea bags.

At the entrance of the ground floor level of Gallery Lontar four mannequins wearing the Virus Costume or clothes made from drinking straws, plastic bottles, tea bags, tooth brushes and tooth paste tubes greeted visitors on the opening night of Empty Legacy, an exhibition of her works. The logic is that if this material is good enough to wrap the surface of the earth it is good enough to clothe human beings.

All the pieces of rubber tire collected in a heap on the second floor are a reminder of roads bandaging the pores of the earth. When she is on the highway, parked in a traffic jam, she often wonders where is she headed in such great hurry?

But on her move from Manila to Jakarta she decided to give up working with trash. She found it too depressing. Once in Jakarta her family was given accommodation at the Hotel Kristal and from the window of her fifth floor flat she looked down upon a colony of people who were scavengers by profession.

Whenever she looked she saw them collecting, cleaning and ironing out stuff. She was so curious that she went into their midst to discover that they recycled plastic bags collected from household garbage and sold them to small vendors. Immediately she got involved with the scavengers and asked them to collect specific items like cellophane wrappers that cannot be recycled.

Today she works with 30 families, mostly women and girls, paying them by the kilo for the waste. The idea, says Ann, is to link up scavenger colonies with other organizations like furniture makers and tailors.

She wants to make new products using what is available perhaps in preparation for the day when there are no trees, no birds, no plants and no bugs left for human beings to play with and profit from.

Empty Legacy, works made from trash remains open till April 28 at Galeri Lontar, Jl. Utan Kayu 68H Jakarta Timur. For further information call 8573387.