Eileen Ferara, curator of Too much! created the exhibition to bring focus on over consumerism and how our need to buy more things may affect the environment we live in. After looking into the projects and project descriptions displayed in the Visual Arts Gallery, I notice that while each artist may focus on different themes such as plastic pollution, recycling, and capitalism, each brings us back to the concern of over consumerism. Some of those artworks include Throw a Dog a Bone (ladder), Walk On, and Illuminous City.
Throw a Dog a Bone (ladder) by Vandana Jain portrays an image of “cartoonish” dog bones made from plastic bags she collected from bodegas and liquor stores. She explains that the gold and silver inks and different printed styles which seemed to give off “hints of opulence” caught her attention which led her to using the plastic bags to create one of her own pieces of artwork. She states that her “work recontextualizes the rich visual symbolic language surrounding us to comment on capitalism, globalization, and consumerism.” Plastic bags are known to have a negative impact on the environment. Due to many of them not being thrown away properly, animals in the ocean are severely hurt, the air we breathe is polluted, and agricultural production is being negatively affected. Plastic bags are easily obtainable making it easy for them to be over consumed. Just as the artist was able to collect plastic bags from bodegas and liquor stores, every time going grocery shopping, I end up with a ton of extra bags which is a great example of how the things that may be harmful to the environment are easily accessible to us.
Walk On By Nancy Buchanan portrays an image of shoes you would see in a women’s closet. The artist states that her “work addresses the excesses of capitalism, which encourages overconsumption.” Society has taught us to believe that we need more things that may be unnecessary such as plenty of shoes. Just as the gold and silver inks and different printed styles” on the plastic bags caught Vandana Jain’s attention, the different style shoes with different colors catch every girl’s attention such as myself. The issue with this is capitalism. We live in a society that is built on capitalism, a system controlled by the government that continues to take our money by providing us with something we have been taught to believe we must have and can't live without. These beliefs may come from magazines, commercials, and as shown above, images that we are able to see all throughout the world and the media. These images catch our attention and somehow convince us to buy what's being sold. In the book, Ways of Seeing, when speaking about publicity images, John Berger states, “It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more. This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer — even though we will be poorer by having spent our money.” The issue with capitalism is that it only makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. I come from a low-income household but from the looks of all the shoes in my closet, someone may assume, I come from a wealthier household. I shouldn’t have so many shoes but I guess I do fall in the category of people who are persuaded to buy excessive things even when they are not needed. John Berger states, “In the cities in which we live, all of us see hundreds of publicity images every day of our lives. No other kind of image confronts us so frequently.” Many of those images we see are on social media such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. Social media plays a big part in this by causing us to want to be on the same trend and buy the same thing we see in the image being uploaded. John Berger states, “We are now so accustomed to being addressed by these images that we scarcely notice their total impact.”
Illuminous City is a piece of artwork created by Paramit Thantapalit that represents the overconsumption many of us continue to participate in. Thantapalit collected over 300 used soda plastic bottles and other scraps of non recycled material from her home for over 3-4 years to create Iluminous City which she states, “is a good example of how we generate waste.” The artist uses her art to focus on environmental issues, the impact we continue to have on it, and how we must change our ways to better it. In the book, “This is What I Know About Art,” Kimberly Drew states “It's about the things that artists and friends teach us and how we employ them in our lives.” It is the images we see and how we interpret them for the better of our lives and the environment. As she mentioned that she used recycled pieces from her home, I realize the issue with recycling is over consumerism. People believe recycling justifies the wrong of over-consuming. Too many people use more of what they need and instead of changing the amount being used they recycle. The downside to recycling is that it doesn’t allow people to see the issue of over consumerism but instead confuses them and leads them to it. Paramit Thantapalit showed a great example of how recycling only represents the over consumerism we take part in. I recently started collecting plastic bottles that I use every day which is a great example of how much plastic is being distributed. There should be a better way to provide us with clean water or other drinks such as soda and juice rather than using so many plastic bottles that may harm the environment. John Berger states “The fact that these images belong to the moment but speak of the future produces a strange effect,” which I believe we need to take a better look at.
Just as the artist in the nomad’s chapter created “work that encouraged individuals autonomy,” the artists who were able to display their work in the gallery used their artwork to encourage us to take a look at our actions and how we play a part in over consumerism. Dré Wapenaar, one of the artists mentioned in the Nomads chapter states that his work “is a public art meant to provoke a response,” which Vandana Jain, Nancy Buchanan, and Paramit Thantapalit were able to do through their own works of art. Below each image I chose from the gallery, I uploaded an image that resembled the same objects being used in the art. Below the image Throw a Dog a Bone (ladder) is an image of a plastic bag filled with many other plastic bags that were collected after grocery shopping. Under the image Walk on was an image of all the shoes I have in my closet and below Illuminous City was an image of the plastic bottles, I began collecting just as the artist did. The fact that I was able to upload an image that resembled exactly what the artist was portraying shows a great example of how we all participate in over consumerism. Kimberly Drew, states, “Small actions foster change,” which these artists will be able to do through their own works of art by addressing these issues we participate in.
Work Cited
About: Vandana Jain, www.vandanajain.net/pages/about.php.
Berger, John. John Berger: Ways of Seeing (Paperback); 1995 Edition. John Berger, 1672.
Drew, Kimberly, and Ashley Lukashevsky. This Is What I Know About Art (Pocket Change Collective). Penguin Workshop, 2020.
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