Artist Taeyoun Kim: the genius of plastic

Why is Artist Taeyoun Kim’s art so important?

A plastic Island is upon us.
aka “great pacific garbage patch, pacific trash gyre, the pacific trash vortex, and “oh my…what have we done?!”‘
Simply put, it’s a swirling mass of plastic in the middle of the Pacific ocean that is big enough to qualify as the planet’s largest landfill. Roughly located in an area between 135° to 155°W and 35° to 42°N, much of the world’s trash has accumulated into this part of the Pacific Ocean based on the movement of ocean currents.
People create, consume, and carelessly toss plastics and the litter ends up in the water ways. As the plastic reaches the shoreline, currents carry it out into the ocean and a convergence of currents swirl the plastics into one general area.
Avoiding plastic in this western world is harder that we think. Our culture has become so dependent on this material, it will be very difficult to change. We must do small things and gradually replace plastic with something biodegradable.
That is what makes Korean Artist Taeyoun Kim’s work so vital. What she has begun to do is address this matter with her art. Though the end result is still plastic, it is the ill impact of it’s results altered in a proactive alternative to how to recycle it. Plastic is just not going to magically, biologically go away,

Plastic bags that once used to contain pretty clothes, dinner makings, medications, materials for my works, or late-night snacks.
Plastic bags of various colors that used to be wrinkle-less, shiny, and neatly folded contain and carry numerous objects depending on their usage from a part to another of our daily lives. After being unwrapped to reveal what they have carried, it is most common for these plastic bags to be thrown away. I collect plastic bags that do not deserve to be thrown away immediately and then produce yarn or weave fabrics by cutting, extending, and sewing them. There is one thing that I realized while finding it fun to produce more and more yarn and pieces of fabric: that there is nothing that is meant to be insignificant and unimportant from the beginning and that the value of every object can vary depending on how we see, handle, and use it.
I wanted to share this experience with others. I collected plastic bags no longer in use and pictures of flowers from close friends. Then I made yarn out of the plastic bags that once carried some small pieces of their lives and weaved flowers for each of them. After showing off that they are actually plastic bags at one side of the exhibition hall, these flowers will come back to their original owners. They will come back as flowers that contain many stories of their owners’ lives,” – Taeyoun Kim states