After “parting the sea” with 168,000 used plastic straws, Benjamin Von Wong has created another epic installation. This time, he and his team collected 18,000 plastic cups and turned them into a “crystal cave.” Other than letting you take Instagram-worthy shots inside of it, this “cave” also warns about the excessive use of disposable plastic in our everyday lives.
Along with his team, Ben decided to make a selfie-ready art piece in Singapore. Although it was made from 18,000 plastic cups, it took the team only a day and a half to collect them. I guess this tells something about how much of them are used every day. The cups were collected from two dozen hawker centers across Singapore, and the team spent over two days cleaning them. For the rest of the week, the volunteers helped to arrange and assemble the cleaned cups into an art installation.
The dirty old cups were transformed into a shiny crystal cave and the project was titled Plastikophobia. Ben writes that the goal was to lure the “unsuspecting [passersby] with the promise of a pretty selfie, only to be overcome by a feeling of Plastikophobia – an extreme aversion to single-use plastics.”
Of course, Ben also took a couple of photos inside the cave. One of them depicts our planet surrounded by a sea of plastic, and the other refers to all the plastic that ends up in our oceans.
©Von Wong, model: Jialin Neo
©Von Wong, model: Max Pagel
Ben and his team hope that locals living in and around Singapore would take the time to go and visit the “Instagram trap” they created. He adds that local photographers and artists have already started to use hashtag #plastikophobia, which is a great way to ignite conversations around the plastic problem.
Honestly, I’d never thought something that beautiful could be created from ugly plastic cups. It doesn’t only raise awareness about our overuse of plastic, but I believe it can also raise awareness that plastic can be recycled, reused, repurposed – and even turned into a piece of art.
Plastikophobia is currently set up at Sustainable Singapore Galleries in the Marina Barrage, and it will be up until April 18th. If you find yourself in Singapore, make sure to visit it. You can read more about the project on Ben’s blog, and follow his work on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
