Castaway: The Afterlife of Plastic

When:
Saturday, May 17, 2025 9:00a -
Monday, Apr 06, 2026 5:00p

Where:
Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology
11 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138

EventScheduled OfflineEventAttendanceMode

Admission:
$Regular museum admission rates apply.

Hosted by:
...
hmsc Harvard Museums of Science & Culture

Categories:
Art, Innovation, Kid Friendly, Nature

Event website:
https://peabody.harvard.edu/castaway-afterlife-plastic

In this exhibition, the art collective TRES invites us to share their 2016 journey to document, collect, and photograph debris along the beaches of Australia. Evoking archaeology, marine biology, and cartography, their images summon us to more deeply engage with the natural vistas and objects they have encountered, and to examine and interpret them with fresh perspectives.


TRES transports us with photographs of glowing orbs that resemble celestial spheres more than the bottle caps they once were. Making their way as garbage to Australia from as far away as China, these objects have been scarred by Bryozoa, tiny micro-organisms which can be seen in the display case in this exhibition. Now, plastic items such as these lay scattered about the otherwise pristine-appearing landscapes.


The rhythmic flow of images challenges us to make sense of the terrain. With hand-drawn maps and charts, TRES attempts to bring order to a perplexing world, where plastic objects resemble organic ones, and “natural” landscapes bear unmistakable traces of human-made pollution.

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