Digester

2024 - Present

The "Digester" artwork series features sculptural paintings made from fused single-use plastic films, reimagining waste colonialism as speculative mural-like skins from a distant, dystopian future. This series highlights the environmental and health impacts of waste colonialism, where developed nations export waste to countries like Thailand, causing severe local damage and emitting vast amounts of greenhouse gases globally. Drawing on Thai-Buddhist animist beliefs, I interpret human pollution and climate change as spectral haunting, karma, and punishment, envisioning futuristic rituals that help the trapped "souls" within plastic move on to their next life. The process involves laboriously fusing plastic film waste with heat to create a tapestry, then applying a mixture of acrylic mediums, wastewater, and Thai food offerings. As the mixture evaporates, it forms patterns reminiscent of topographical illustrations of contemporary environmental issues, such as melting glaciers and agricultural runoff polluting water bodies, transforming waste into relics, and converting environmental transgressions into merit-making.