This piece depicts a pregnant woman’s torso created from clear plastic bags and polyester resin. The identical bags are flattened and glued together. They are cast into the same mold, however each layer or form that emerges entails a different arrangement of bag shapes. Holes between the bags are left open, rather than coated with resin. The final sculpture includes 5 layers of plastic-bag torsos, fitted together one after another, displayed atop a cement pillar.
The plastic bags, having lost their functionality, are no longer capable of holding anything. They are themselves held in place by clear resin and seem like the transparent casement or shell for a fragile object. A pregnant belly represents a safe passage into this world for what will become a new person. The baby inside portends the multiplication of the human race; the enlargement of the population, the extension of the parents’ bodies, the creation of new life.
In Pleine, the pregnant torso is filled with plastic bags, rather than a fetus. The bags repeat one after another and could potentially continue in an infinite succession, snaking around an exhibition space. The repetitive, seemingly limitless production of petroleum-based bags is contrasted with the organic, individual experience of pregnancy. In filling our world with products that cannot decompose, we are putting the future of our own children in peril. In ceding the decision over whether or not to produce a given good to market demand, we often ignore the needs of the planet and the needs of our own bodies.