Field Mothers
2022Found agricultural polypropylene waste fabric, native plants
.5 ha x .5 ha x 2 m
A collection of photographs capturing agricultural polypropylene waste fabric as found wrapped around native plants in the semi-arid native landscape.
A crowd of white beings, silent but complex, with suspected motives as the fabric desperately wraps around anything it can reach. There is a tragic beauty in these voluptuous, ever changing sculptures: a conflicted tension between protection/ shelter/ tenderness and suffocation/ toxicity/ desperation. As the winds push and stretch the fabric, it continues to suffocate the plants, breaking down into increasingly smaller shreds and microplastic which eventually end up in the nearby Mediterranean sea.
These formations feel maternal both in shape (voluptuous folds as bellies and breasts, ribbon-like wrapping arms, intimate dark crevices) and in behavior (sheltering, enshrouding, protecting) as well as the endless birthing of smaller clones: generations of tiny plastic beings that are carried by the wind, rain, and animals into the surrounding shrubland.
San Juan de los Terreros, Spain, June 2022
A crowd of white beings, silent but complex, with suspected motives as the fabric desperately wraps around anything it can reach. There is a tragic beauty in these voluptuous, ever changing sculptures: a conflicted tension between protection/ shelter/ tenderness and suffocation/ toxicity/ desperation. As the winds push and stretch the fabric, it continues to suffocate the plants, breaking down into increasingly smaller shreds and microplastic which eventually end up in the nearby Mediterranean sea.
These formations feel maternal both in shape (voluptuous folds as bellies and breasts, ribbon-like wrapping arms, intimate dark crevices) and in behavior (sheltering, enshrouding, protecting) as well as the endless birthing of smaller clones: generations of tiny plastic beings that are carried by the wind, rain, and animals into the surrounding shrubland.
San Juan de los Terreros, Spain, June 2022
© 2024 Elizabeth Robinson