Yesenia Thibault Picazo
Future Synthetic Oceanic Crusts
60 years ago, plastic was considered as a miraculous substance that Roland Barthes named the ‘stuff of alchemy’. Nowadays, plastic is central in the vivid environmental debate linked to human activity. The presence of plastics has been confirmed in the most remote and pristine places on Earth, these including the deep-oceans. Plastics are to mark importantly our geological record.
This is where the limits between the nature-made and the human-made blur. We are witnessing the raise of a post-nature since collective human actions and natural forces converge.
Yesenia Thibault Picazo’s design for a monument to the anthropocene is a series of 5 participative devices, figuring 5 miniatures of oceans. Each pieces is located in a different coastal city situated on the path of the ocean currents which form the 5 major gyres.
Inspired by the ‘geo-mimicry’ technology (the science that mimics geological processes), the devices offer a metaphor of the geological process of sedimentation that occurs in the ocean. The interactive and transformative dimension aim to provoke debate and question the potential of this new synthetic matter.
Through a ritualistic act, the audience is invited to become makers of its own monument.
Rather than witnessing past facts, this monuments witness the present time and its plausible future in order to raise awareness.
The project stresses the concept of ultimate destruction caused by human activity with a long term co-creation with nature.
Artist Bio
Yesenia Thibault-Picazo is a French multidisciplinary artist and designer based in London. She specializes in creating work that explores the intersections between craft, design, and environmental science. Thibault-Picazo often collaborates with scientists and researchers to investigate the materiality of the natural world and the impact of human activities on the environment. Her practice includes creating objects, installations, and speculative projects that provoke thought about sustainable futures and the relationships between humans and their environment. Thibault-Picazo’s work is characterized by its innovative use of materials and its engagement with ecological themes.
Themes: ruins, waste, technofossils
Category: Artefacts