Art against garbage: Alejandro Duran’s “Washed up” installations

Located at the Mexican coast of the Caribbean, there is the national park Sian Ka’an (in English “where the sky is born”) – an old settlement area of the Maya with diverse wildlife and plant life, which was added to the world heritage list of the UNESCO as a biosphere reserve in 1987. With its varied flora and fauna and numerous Mayan sites, the area would be paradise on Earth, if there were not the tons of garbage washed ashore by the Caribbean sea every day. The Mexican artist Alejandro Duran has taken on the problem in an artistic and PR-effective way. He raises awareness of marine pollution by collecting the garbage on the shore and using it for his installations – which he calls, rather fittingly, „Washed up“.

Cepillos 005 © Alejandro Duran

Anybody who thinks that the problem is only regional and that we live too far away to change anything, should take a look at the following photo.

As can be seen in the picture above and the rest of the photos which Duran has posted here, products from 50 different countries were found during the duration of the project. Some hail from countries from the other end of the world, such as South Korea, Taiwan, and China.