Society has become far too cluttered with materialism and consumerism. In order to demonstrate how ruinous this mass consumer culture has become, I investigated the possibility of using the Werdmuller Centre, a former shopping mall in Claremont that has been scheduled for demolition, as the site for our creative intervention.
The idea of having people inhabit an abandoned space appealed to me and so I used silhouettes giving the impression that the building created the silhouettes by sticking a dispersed trail of strips of plastic bags alongside the silhouettes that would trickle down the wall into a small pile of plastic packet strips on the floor.
This represents the very nature of consumerism consuming one’s identity in today’s modern materialistic society, status is deemed higher than individuality and status is most often determined by what you buy. I differentiated the silhouettes by filling each of them with a different colour of plastic bag which also visually play on the phrase, “you are what you eat” - a phrase used to encourage healthy eating - by implying that it should be more appropriately put, “you are what you buy,” which comments on how one’s status is perceived through what they are able to consume.
The idea for the portrait is to personify the artworks by sticking the same strips of plastic packets used to fill in the silhouettes onto the upper torso. This idea builds on from the concept of consumerism consuming identity by allowing us, the artists, to admit that we part of the problem as well and that everyone is affected by consumerism because it has simply just become a staple part of human existence.
The pictures were taken in a sequence with more plastic being stuck on with every picture. This is to illustrate how people start out pure and untainted (as innocent young children) consumerism gradually starts to become a part of you (the child who throws a tantrum because he or she wants a toy) until it consumes more and more of you until you are fully consumed in your later life.
Thank you
Marike van Wyk Photography
Cleo Patra Henry Location scout
